Pilot, Flight Instructor Dies After Struggle With Car Crash Injuries : Courage: Charlotte Hammond, 30, had her hands, legs amputated after a 1988 crash, but was walking and about to enter law school at the time of her death.

Charlotte Hammond, who was a flight instructor and airplane pilot before a 1988 car crash left her with burns so bad that an ear fell off and doctors had to amputate her hands and both legs above the knees, has died. She was 30.

Hammond was found Friday at her Rancho Santa Fe home by her nurse, said her lawyer, San Diego attorney Speedy Rice. She had died in her sleep overnight, Rice said, apparently from complications resulting from the accident.

“She was a prisoner in that body,” Pat Brown, a KYXY-FM newscaster who was one of Hammond’s flight students, said Monday. “She tried as hard as she could. It finally wasn’t enough. I feel now that she is free, and in a happier place. She was just a remarkable human being.”

Despite the formidable physical obstacles she had to endure after the crash, Hammond pledged to “get back to a somewhat normal, active life.” She learned to walk with prosthetics, took driving lessons in a specially adapted pickup truck and took up painting.

She also applied--and was accepted--to law school. Hammond was due to begin classes in January at California Western School of Law in San Diego, Rice said. “She’d been doing water colors and some writing,” Rice said. “What can you say?”

The crash took place Jan. 30, 1988, between El Centro and Holtville in the Imperial Valley. The brakes failed on a farm truck driven by laborer Fernando R. Niebla--and it slammed into Hammond’s 1985 Nissan at an intersection.

Her car slid under the right-front side of the truck. The truck rolled over. One of the truck’s gas caps was missing and fuel spilled out under Hammond’s car, igniting it. Hammond had been knocked unconscious and, because her car had been badly crushed on impact, she was trapped.

Rescuers were able to remove Hammond from the car only after her seat belt, which she was wearing, burned off. By then, Hammond had been burned over nearly all her body.

Because of the burns, doctors had to amputate both legs above the knees and both hands. About two weeks after the accident, Hammond’s right ear, which was badly charred, began to fall off.

Hammond’s face was also badly burned. She lost about 60% of her hearing and suffered lung damage from inhaling smoke and fire.

Shortly after the crash, Hammond filed suit against the owner and driver of the truck and others, alleging negligence. The suit settled in December, 1989, with a lump sum of cash and an annuity that guaranteed Hammond or her estate a total of at least $14 million, including $23,717 monthly for her medical care.

The arrangement, one of the largest pretrial settlements in the history of the San Diego courts, could have grown to $20 million if Hammond had lived longer.

The cause of Hammond’s death, according to the county medical examiner’s office, was lung damage.

Services are set for Thursday at the San Diego Aerospace Museum in Balboa Park, Rice said.