Boy, 11, Brings Rescuers to Plane Crash Victims

Three times, cars sped by Chris Palmer as the boy stood along an isolated stretch of highway, waving for somebody to help him rescue his injured father and sister from the wreckage of their small plane.

Nobody stopped, forcing the boy to hike back into the trees in the falling darkness, retracing his steps back to a remote forest clearing.

“He is only 11 years old, but as far as I’m concerned, he has the heart of a lion,” his mother, Patti Palmer, said Tuesday.

The boy’s father, John Kenneth Palmer, a financial planner from San Jose, and his 13-year-old daughter, Stephani, were both hospitalized in fair condition after the Sunday crash.

Ken Palmer and his two children were traveling to Medford when the engine of their small plane cut out at the California border.

Ken Palmer managed to glide the single-engine Piper to a crash landing. It came down between two trees that ripped the wings off before the fuselage ground to a halt in the mud, ending up on its side. He managed to kick out the windshield, and helped his son get Stephani out of the wreckage.

But some bones in Stephani’s lower back had been cracked and she was unable to walk.

Chris saw that his father was bleeding from facial cuts, had a severely bruised chest and was fading in and out of consciousness.

The fifth-grader decided to look for help.

The driver of one of the cars that drove by Chris called 911 reporting a boy trying to flag him down, and the dispatcher figured it might be related to the missing plane. But by the time a medical unit arrived, Chris was nowhere to be found.

The family heard the voices of rescue crews, however, and Palmer banged on the plane’s windows to let them know where they were.