Thursday, June 21, 2007

You may see me on TV with an illegal smile. . . .

Betty McManus, 53, was gracious enough to take a moment to speak with assembled TV reporters after a single-engine plane crashed in her Baton Rouge, La., back yard.

Her granddaughter, 15-year-old Betty McManus, also was gracious enough to speak with reporters showing up to cover the crash, which miraculously injured no one. The pilot walked away after being helped from the wrecked Cessna by a neighbor.

Southern hospitality truly is a blessing. And a curse.

See, while everybody was being helpful and gracious to pilot and press, no one remembered to get rid of the 14 potted marijuana plants in the back yard.

And after the more pressing matters were attended to, Baton Rouge police took the elder Betty McManus away to jail on felony marijuana-cultivation charges. She reportedly will plead "Won't you please tell The Man I didn't kill anyone, no I'm just trying to have me some fun."

The Advocate has the details:

Police found the plants Wednesday afternoon while they were working at the crash site at 3229 Canonicus St.

Betty McManus, 53, who lives in an apartment behind the house, was accused of growing the marijuana, police spokesman Cpl. L’Jean McKneely said. Darryl Jenkins, 51, who also lives in the apartment, was issued a misdemeanor summons on a possession of marijuana count.

The Cessna 206 crashed in the yard just after 10 a.m. after pilot Robin Tendolkar said the plane lost power, a Metro Airport official said Wednesday.

Tendolkar, an aerial photographer for Gulf Coast Aerial Mapping, had finished a 35-mile flight and had received clearance from the airport to land, said Bill Profita, an airport spokesman.

Soon after Tendolkar checked his landing gear, the plane lost power, Profita said. Why it lost power is under investigation by the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board.

Tendolkar, who was not injured, declined comment. Although he wasn’t injured, he had to be pulled from the cockpit by a neighbor who saw the plane go down and ran to help.
Donald Ray Henry said he was standing in his backyard on Canonicus Street talking to a friend when he heard the sputtering engine of a plane overhead.

Henry’s friend, Clarence McGarner, a Baton Rouge police detective, glanced up and said out loud to himself: “That plane is kind of low.”

Seconds later, the southbound Cessna flew right over Henry’s roof, grazed the top of a towering pine tree and crashed into a live oak tree three houses down the street.

The oak spun the plane around and it came to rest at 10:19 a.m. atop a downed tree branch.

“It was an almost perfect crash,” McGarner said.

After he saw the plane hit the tree, McGarner jumped into his car to call police headquarters and report a plane had gone down, while Henry ran toward the plane to check on anyone inside.

He found an alert pilot who was able to talk and help push out a broken window.

Numerous agencies, including the Baton Rouge fire and police departments, EMS and State Police, arrived at the crash site.

(snip)

Later that afternoon, police found the marijuana plants 10 to 15 yards from the plane.

“You never know when you’re going to have a plane crash in your backyard,” McKneely said.

I'M FROM BATON ROUGE, and I miss home. Nothing like this happens in respectably Midwestern and sedate Omaha (By God!) Nebraska.

The closest thing we've had here recently was last year's "Bare-Bottom Bandit," whose pants fell down as he drunkenly burglarized a liquor store, only to be caught red-handed and bare-assed by security cameras.

But a plane crashing in the 'hood, leading the cops to discover Ganja Acres? That, podna, only could happen in my hometown.

So if there's any lesson to be learned here, it has to be what the Baton Rouge police spokeswoman said: Don't grow pot because “You never know when you’re going to have a plane crash in your backyard.”

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