Crop-dusting pilot dies in crash

CIRCLE CITY, Mo. -- A small helicopter crashed in a Stoddard County cotton field Wednesday morning, killing the pilot after his craft came too close to a power line.

Joe Criddle, 41, of Houston, Miss., was spraying an insecticide on fields just north of Circle City to rid them of boll weevils at about 10 a.m. when one of his rotors hit an electrical service line, said Stoddard County Emergency Management director Bill Pippins Jr.

The small Robinson 22 helicopter then struck two other high-voltage lines and came down in the field near the intersection of Route N and County Road 530, four miles north of U.S. 60. Criddle was likely killed by either the voltage or the impact, Pippins said.

At least two calls reporting the crash were answered within a minute of each other by the 911 dispatcher. One was from a passerby on a cell phone and another was from the property owner, Ray McCormick, Pippin said.

Trooper Stephen Jarrell of the Missouri State Highway Patrol stood guard over the taped-off crash site until representatives from the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board arrived from St. Louis in the afternoon.

Criddle was flying Wednesday for Bootheel Boll Weevil Eradication Services of Malden, Mo., under contract through Show-Me Helicopter of Salem, Mo., Pippins said.

Witnesses to crash

Two witnesses saw the crash, Jarrell said. One was a female co-worker of the pilot, who was driving a truck and staying in radio contact with Criddle. The other was Ron Lacy of Bell City, Mo., who was driving south on Route N in his pickup.

As Lacy approached where Criddle was flying, he was close enough to see the pilot's white helmet and short-sleeved shirt, since the craft had no doors, he said. Criddle had just completed a pass and was swooping back over the highway before he hit the service line.

Lacy said he was admiring how smoothly the craft was being flown when it hit the line.

"It was all happening so fast, it almost seemed like I was watching a movie," Lacy said. "I got a little farther down the road before I figured out what I had just seen."

Sparks and fire instantly popped for about a quarter mile down the electric lines, he said.

Criddle apparently had no idea he was so close to a service wire stretching across part of the field from a smaller pole to larger poles carrying the 160,000-volt lines.

"The lady he was with said afterward that he had just radioed her and told her he'd be done in another minute," Lacy said. "And then he crashed."

Both Lacy and the woman raced to the crash site on foot, but it was too late.

"I fell down twice trying to get to him, but he was dead when I got there," Lacy said. "Finally, it got so that it was burning with flames so high that you couldn't see what it was. It was a ball of fire."

By the time firefighters could arrive from Essex, Mo., the helicopter's fuel and chemicals had mostly burned up and the debris was merely smoldering, he said.

Criddle's body was taken to Morgan Sifford Funeral Home in Puxico, Mo. The debris and engine were taken to an airport hanger in Malden for examination by the crash investigators.

The last aircraft accident in the county occurred about a year ago, Pippins said. It was a fixed-wing plane that was also spraying the insecticide malathion east of Essex. The plane was destroyed, but there were no injuries. Wednesday's crash caused a power outage in Oran, Mo., and surrounding areas, but it was restored before 1 p.m.

Like Criddle, many pilots flying over Southeast Missouri's farm fields are not locals, Pippin said. They may spend a while in one region or state and then travel to where the cotton is at another stage of growth for spraying.

"We're not surprised by crashes," Pippins said. "Considering the number of cotton fields here and the number of planes flying over them, we just never know when another one is going to happen."

mwells@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 160