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Witness Tells of Moments Before and After Crash

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Drew W. Gottshall was planting a sign beside a gravelly trail here when he heard the roar of a plane falling from the sky. It was the sound of the fatally stricken Alaska Airlines Flight 261 plunging headlong into the Pacific two miles from his island outpost.

He may have been the first person on the ground to see the jetliner’s plunge and is certainly one of a few witnesses to the disaster. The maintenance worker lives on the remote, 700-acre island year-round with his daughter.

For the record:

12:00 a.m. Feb. 7, 2000 For the Record
Los Angeles Times Monday February 7, 2000 Home Edition Part A Page 3 Metro Desk 1 inches; 28 words Type of Material: Correction
Squid boat--In recent coverage of the crash of Alaska Airlines Flight 261, the name of a squid fishing boat used to search for survivors has been spelled incorrectly. The vessel is named Calogera A.

Gottshall, 45, declined to speak to the news media, but issued his account of events in a prepared statement released Tuesday night by the National Park Service after a meeting with crash investigators.

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“I was putting in a sign on the lighthouse trail [when] I heard the aircraft and looked up and followed its path until it hit the water,” Gottshall said.

A San Diego-based squid fishing boat, the Calegara A., was in the water nearby, and Gottshall saw it turn and head for the crash site. He then ran to his house and contacted officials at Channel Islands National Park headquarters in Ventura, who alerted the Coast Guard.

Grabbing a pair of binoculars, Gottshall ran back up the steep trail to the lighthouse, a high point on the island with a commanding view of the Santa Barbara Channel below. The plane went down in a stretch of ocean well traveled by freighters and fishing fleets about 10 miles southwest of Oxnard.

“Through the binoculars, I saw one piece of debris floating on the water and a creamy-colored fuel slick. The plane made a quick entry into the water upon impact and disappeared. Because of the distance, it was four or five seconds after seeing the plane impact before I heard the sound” of the crash, he said.

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