By Sheila Stogsdill
news@joplinglobe.com
JAY, Okla. — Manslaughter charges against a man who was piloting an airplane that crashed into Grand Lake, resulting in the deaths of three people, were dropped Wednesday.
In a three-page ruling, District Judge Robert Haney said the “cause of the accident was the engine stalling. There is no evidence of why the engine stalled and, more importantly, no evidence of the defendant doing something that was of criminal nature that ‘caused’ the engine to stall that resulted in the crash that resulted in the deaths.”
Thomas Brent Caldwell, 30, of Pryor, was charged in Delaware County District Court with three counts of first-degree manslaughter in the deaths of Mariano Carlos Casas, 15, of Pryor, and Eduardo Ortiz Robles, 20, and Campos Gonzalez, 33, both of Mexico.
District Attorney Eddie Wyant said he planned to appeal the ruling.
“The Court of Criminal Appeals can make the final decision on whether the case should proceed or not,” Wyant said Wednesday. “We still feel strongly according to law, he (Caldwell) should be prosecuted.
A medical examiner’s report showed that the three men drowned when the plane crashed Dec. 16 into the Drowning Creek arm of Grand Lake.
Caldwell suffered several cuts, bruises and a broken nose but was able to swim to shore after the plane crashed into about 12 feet of water.
At the time of the crash, authorities said they believed Caldwell was under the influence of alcohol. Investigators reportedly found four empty beer bottles and one unopened beer bottle on the dashboard of the 1972 Bellanca 17-30A, a single-engine, fixed-wing airplane.
Caldwell refused to submit to an alcohol test at the site, the Oklahoma Highway Patrol reported at the time. Blood was drawn from Caldwell at a Tulsa hospital about six hours after the crash, a toxicology report shows. No alcohol was noted in the blood, prompting the district attorney’s office to file amended charges deleting the intoxication allegation. The report showed that a prescription drug was found in Caldwell’s system, but Delaware County sheriff’s deputies said no drugs were found on the plane.
A report from the National Transportation Safety Board showed that Caldwell did not have a license and had not logged a flight in the five months preceding the crash.
Investigators went through the flight-control systems and could not find anything wrong with the plane or explain why it crashed, the report stated.
“I think the judge followed the law,” said Winston Connor II, Caldwell’s attorney. “The application of the law would be different if his failure to have a pilot license somehow caused the engine failure.”
Attorney perspective
Winston Connor II, attorney for Thomas Brent Caldwell, said that from the beginning, the families of the three people who died Dec. 16 in the Grand Lake plane crash did not want the case prosecuted. He said he wonders why the state would spend money and time prosecuting Caldwell when no family members of the victims wanted the case to proceed.
