Man jumps or falls from plane; body found in North Carolina backyard

He was not wearing a parachute when his body was recovered.

A man was killed when he jumped or fell from an airplane mid-flight near Raleigh, North Carolina, and landed in the backyard of a home.

The small plane made an emergency landing at 2:40 p.m. Friday in a grassy area near Raleigh-Durham International Airport, a Federal Aviation Administration statement said. Two people had been on the plane when it took off, and only the pilot was on board when it landed, a spokesman for the airport told TV station WRAL.

More than four hours later, the body of co-pilot Charles Hew Crooks, 23, was found in a yard in Fuquay-Varina, about 15 miles southwest of Raleigh, police said. The resident flagged down a team that was searching for the missing man and reported having “heard something” in the yard.

It is unclear whether Crooks jumped or fell from the plane, authorities say. He was not wearing a parachute when his body was recovered, Wake County emergency management spokesperson Darshan Patel said during a news conference.

Crooks apparently was still on the plane when the pilot made an emergency call asking to land at the Raleigh airport because of a problem with landing gear. The pilot said the plane had lost a wheel during a “hard landing” at an airport in Raeford, near Fayetteville, and that they had managed to get airborne but now needed a safe place to land.

The pilot had minor injuries. He was treated at a hospital and released on Friday evening.

The plane is a twin-engine CASA CN-212 Aviocar, a light cargo turboprop plane that can carry up to 26 people and is popular among skydivers. Its agenda Friday is not yet known; an onboard tracker indicated it took off from an airfield at Rocky Mount and flew patterns over Fayetteville, including near a drop zone used by troops from the Army’s Fort Bragg.