911 call from Raleigh plane incident says ‘co-pilot jumped out of the aircraft’

A 911 call from federal officials released Tuesday indicates that a young co-pilot who died in an airplane emergency last week jumped from the plane.

“This is from Raleigh airport,” an unnamed Federal Aviation Administration official says on the 13-minute call.

“We have a pilot that was inbound to the field,” the official tells the dispatcher. “His co-pilot jumped out of the aircraft.”

The co-pilot did not have a parachute, the caller says, giving the dispatcher coordinates where the co-pilot may have landed.

The co-pilot, identified as 23-year-old Charles Hew Crooks, was found dead after a four-hour search Friday evening in the Sonoma Springs subdivision in Fuquay-Varina.

The 911 call does not indicate why or what preceded Crooks exiting the twin-engine cargo plane.

Emergency landing

The CASA C-212 Aviocar, with two licensed pilots on board, had tried landing near a private airport in Raeford early Friday afternoon when the right wheel fell off, The News & Observer previously reported.

The pilot who survived eventually made an emergency landing at Raleigh-Durham International Airport. The name of the pilot has not been released.

In the 911 call, the FAA official expresses shock at what happened.

“He literally said, ‘My [co-]pilot just jumped out,’” the FAA official tells the dispatcher.

The National Transportation Safety Board and FAA will investigate the incident with Fuquay-Varina Police Department’s help, The N&O previously reported. It could take months before their report is released.

Mark Schultz contributed to this report.

This story was originally published August 2, 2022 at 7:10 PM.