AIR TRAGEDY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 26 July 1938, Page 5

AIR TRAGEDY

COLOMBIAN PLANE CRASHES INTO CROWD AT LEAST THIRTY-FOUR KILLED MANY CUT DOWN BY PROPELLER BLADES By Telegraph—Press Association. Copyright. BOGOTA (Colombia), July 25. At least 34 persons were killed and 150 injured when a military plane crashed into a crowd of 50,000 today during a military review at the opening of an army camp here. ' Physicians estimate that the eventual death-roll will be at least 50 because some of those injured are certain to die. The plane was performing aerobatics 90 feet from the ground when it attempted to pass between the diplomatic stand and the grandstand occupied by the President, Doctor Alfonso Lopez, and the President-elect, Senor Eduardo Santos. The tip of the wing hit the diplomatic stand and then struck the presidential stand. The steps of the latter were brushed off. The shrieks from the crowd were drowned in the noise of the plane ripping through the metal .roof of - the stands. There was an explosion of petrol tanks when it hit the ground and the plane ignited immediately. The crowd ran in all directions, but some were powerless to escape, and those in the path of the propellers were decapitated as the blades cut through the bystanders like a scythe. Some of those injured were soaked by the spray of burning petrol and shrieked in desperation and pain. The President, Dr Alfonso Lopez, and Senor Santos were unharmed, although the burning plane fell only a few yards from them. The wife of Mr Julio Minoda, Japanese Charge , d’Affaires, was slightly injured about the head and Miss Isabel Montague Paske Smith, had a narrow escape. The review marked the 155th anniversary of the birth of Simon Bolivar, the soldier-statesman hero of South America’s nineteenth century struggle for independence.