Pilot Shot in Crash to Go to Prison

Thomas Root, the lawyer who was found to have suffered a gunshot wound after his airplane crashed in the Atlantic Ocean, pleaded no contest Friday to 364 counts of securities fraud, conspiracy and related charges.

Under a plea bargain, Root agreed to a 15-year prison term and a $5,000 fine, which will be imposed in January. He agreed also to testify against others indicted in an alleged securities scam.

The state dismissed 91 other charges against him.

Root, who faced up to 1,812 years in prison if convicted of all 455 charges, called the agreement an “offer so attractive to me that I could not refuse it.”

“I continue to suspect that my name was included in the indictment not because of my culpability but rather because my notoriety from my ill-fated airplane flight in July, 1989, ensured the prosecution of getting plenty of press attention for the indictments,” he said.

Root, 37, who is a Washington, D.C., lawyer, passed out in the cockpit of his single-engine plane during a flight from Washington to Rocky Mount, N.C. The plane, which was followed by military planes, eventually crashed in the ocean off the coast of Florida.

Root was pulled from the ocean after the crash, and rescuers discovered that he had been shot in the abdomen. Root has insisted that a pistol he kept in the plane discharged during the crash, but experts have questioned his explanation of the wound.