Pilot in home crash on way to visit daughters

By Kristi Swartz

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Gwinnett authories have identified the pilot of a small plane that crashed into a Lawrenceville house as James Wardlaw, 58, of Atlanta, and the woman who died in the house as Judith Kirchner, 62.

No passengers were on the plane, which crashed Friday.

Investigators got an early morning start Saturday in trying to figure out why the twin-engine Cessna 310 plunged into the neighborhood.

Wardlaw was on his way to see his six daughters in Sparta, Tenn., said Butch Wilson from the National Transportation Safety Board at a Saturday morning press conference in the garage of the destroyed home.

Judith Kirchner's husband was also in the house on the 2300 block of Walker Drive, about a mile east of Collins Hill High School. He was working on his computer in an upstairs room when he felt the house shake, Gwinnett County Fire Capt. Tommy Rutledge said. He ran downstairs, only to be met with intense heat, smoke and fire.

He ran outside, but his wife, who was downstairs in the couple's smoke-filled family room, was unable to get out and perished as the plane exploded and the house went up in flames.

Officials pulled the bodies of Wardlaw and Kirchner from the debris late Friday night and took them to the county medical examiner's office, Rutledge said.

Saturday morning, a steady rain prevented workers from going through the charred remains of the house intermixed with bits of the plane.

Police and fire trucks lined Walker Street. Some cars attempted to travel down the road, but motorists were stopped or either turned around on their own when it was clear they couldn't pass beyond the large fire engines. Yellow police tape blocked off what was left of the home where only a deck and a Kwanzan cherry tree, which neighbors said was planted earlier in the week, remained.

Wilson, an air-safety investigator who works in Atlanta, said NTSB crews from Griffin are on their way to sort out the wreckage. The two largest pieces of debris -- the automobiles that were in the garage -- remain sitting among mangled metal and other ruins. Officials at this point have only managed to locate about 1 percent of the plane.

The rest of the debris is the house, part of which had to be lifted up from the site, he said.

"That's a lot of house to deal with that's intertangled with the plane," he said.

The main thing they are looking for?

"Answers," Wilson said bluntly.

Here's what they know so far:

** The plane went down shortly before 1:30 p.m. after taking off from Gwinnett County Airport, the Federal Aviation Administration said. Wardlaw, the only person on board, was flying using "instrumental flight rules," or an IFR, said Wilson of the NTSB.

** Officials from a flight control tower in Atlanta asked Wardlaw to switch frequencies, but "they never heard from him," Wilson said.

** Emergency officials said there was no contact between the pilot and the Gwinnett air traffic control tower, and no distress signal was sent from the plane.

** The plane is older -- there is no so-called data recorder, or "black box," Wilson said.

Wilson has interviewed Wardlaw's wife, who called her husband a humanitarian and said she was proud of him. Wardlaw had bought the plane from a man who is now in Iraq, Wilson said.

It's the first airplane Wardlaw had owned in two years, Wilson said. A new manual on the plane was recently put together, his wife told Wilson. Officials are still looking for maintenance records, which may be on the plane.

Wardlaw's last FAA flight physical was done in 2006, and he had logged 1,200 hours of flight time, then, Wilson said.

"That's good time," said Wilson, adding that he didn't know how many hours the pilot had flown since then.

Wardlaw's wife told Wilson that he was a cancer survivor, having had surgery earlier this year. She gave few details after that, Wilson said.

Wilson said the pilot got the plane to "take people to different locations," but Friday's mission was personal, as he was going to see his daughters.

Rutledge said the house was in flames when emergency crews arrived. The home was considered a total loss soon afterward, Rutledge said.

FAA officials continue to interview neighbors and others, Wilson said. The investigation is expected to continue through the weekend, maybe longer. A steady rain fell throughout Saturday morning, cooling "hot spots" in the debris but causing officials to take longer to piece together what happened.

Because of that, and because officials don't have a lot of the plane to work with, witnesses may play a large role in determining what happened, Wilson said.

Neighbor Jerry Hennebaul said the explosion surprised him because the plane didn't sound like it had any trouble.

"It sounded like the engine had power, because toward the end, we heard it throttle like it was trying to pull up," Hennebaul said. "Then we heard an explosion."

Hennebaul said neighbors kept Kirchner's husband from returning to the burning house to try to save his wife. He is staying with neighbors and has family, including a daughter, headed to Lawrenceville today, Wilson said.

Neighbor Jack Jordan said he was in his basement when he what he described as an unforgettable sound of screaming engines.

Jordan said he ran outside and "There wasn't a wing, not anything." The fire was small at that point, tiny enough that Jordan said he was going to grab a fire extinguisher to try and help put it out.

Kirchner's husband ran out the front door and around the back to see if his wife was outside, Jordan said. At that point the house, which was tipped at a 45 degree angle, burst into flames and began burning to the ground, Jordan said.

"It was a devastating thing, and we'll never forget it" said another neighbor, who did not want to be identified. She and her husband have lived on Walker Drive in the Southern Trace subdivision for 20 years, she said.

They were close friends with Kirchner and her husband, traveling together and also spending time with others on the street. Though the subdivision is 20 years old, the homes look new, all have well-manicured lawns. Everyone on the street knows everybody else, neighbors said.

"It was a horrible day," the woman said.

-- Reporters Marcus Garner and Alexis Stevens contributed to this report