Fighter Jet Crash Kills 2 in Georgia; Woman Reading Bible Escapes

An Air Force fighter jet crashed into a residential area in rural south Georgia on Friday, killing the pilot and a woman on the ground and narrowly missing a resident who had been reading a Bible in her living room.

It was the second time since November that a military jet crashed in Georgia and killed a civilian on the ground.

The crash victim on the ground was identified by the Atkinson County Sheriff’s Department as Marion Lanier, a cleaning woman who was making her weekly visit to a client’s home.

The F-16A Fighting Falcon was on a training flight from Moody Air Force Base near Valdosta, Ga.,--about 40 miles away--to Lake George Weapons Range in Florida when it crashed. The pilot was the only occupant, a base spokeswoman said.

Officials could not immediately explain why the jet crashed north of the air base when it was scheduled to fly south to Florida. The plane was carrying six practice bombs, but none exploded.

Six homes were damaged in the crash. Reporters at the scene said at least two of the houses were leveled, and the house where Lanier died appeared to have been destroyed by fire. Other houses had windows shattered.

A woman in her 70s living on the other side of the highway narrowly escaped injury. Atkinson County Sheriff Earl Haskins said Mabel Guthrie walked out of her living room, where she had been sitting and reading a Bible, just before the crash. The fuselage tore through the room just after she left to answer the telephone, he said.

“The woman was unharmed,” Haskins said. “It was miraculous.”

The Pearson Volunteer Fire Department sent both of its units to fight the fires, and fire departments from neighboring towns also were called in to assist.

Last November, a Navy jet crashed into an apartment complex north of Atlanta and burst into flames, killing two residents and seriously wounding the pilot. The fighter was trying to land at Dobbins Air Force Base when it crashed in suburban Smyrna, Ga.

In May, 1989, a trainer jet out of Moody accidentally dropped a 500-pound bomb in west Georgia. It blew up in a wooded area, narrowly missing some houses. The Air Force blamed a faulty bomb rack.