No Light Shed on Lawyer-Pilot’s Crash

Federal investigators on Thursday concluded the obvious about Thomas Root’s solo flight and crash into the Atlantic Ocean three years ago, but shed no new light on how he was shot before he lost control of his single-engine craft.

Root, a Washington communications lawyer, was at the time under legal and financial pressure regarding his handling of broadcast license applications. He has been sentenced to 15 years in prison by a North Carolina court on 364 counts of securities fraud and conspiracy, and to 33 months in prison by a federal court on five counts, including fraud and perjury.

Root has denied shooting himself despite the statements of weapons experts that the gun he kept in the plane could not have fired accidentally, as he suggested.

“The National Transportation Safety Board determines that the probable cause of the accident was a gunshot wound, which resulted in a loss of the pilot’s ability to effectively fly and navigate the aircraft, and a subsequent loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion,” the agency said.

Root flew hundreds of miles from Washington down the Atlantic Coast, shadowed by military jets, on July 13, 1989, before running out of gas and plunging into the ocean. He was pulled from the water by Air Force parachutists.