Milton Bradley was a 72-year-old World War II Navy veteran living in Savannah, Georgia, in May 1994 when he met Gary Ray Bowles, a serial killer who had already taken the lives of two men and was looking for his next victim.
The veering of the plane during landing was among new details released Thursday by the National Transportation Safety Board, which is investigating why the plane ended up in the St. Johns River at Naval Air Station Jacksonville.
A passenger shouted “Watch out! Watch out!” as other passengers and crew members cautiously walked out on a wing of the Boeing 737, just moments after it had landed at a Florida military base, crashed through a stone seawall, and ended up in a river.
A military-chartered jet carrying 143 people landed hard, then bounced and swerved as the pilot struggled to control it amid thunder and lightning, ultimately skidding off the runway and coming to a crashing halt in a river at Naval Air Station Jacksonville.