NEW HAVEN -- Police in East Haven have identified the surviving instructor who was flying in a small plane Wednesday before it crashed near Tweed-New Haven Airport. Rafayel Hany Wassef, 20, of New London, remains in critical condition at Yale-New Haven Hospital.
"We want send our condolences to the family of the deceased and want to thank all of the outside organizations who assisted us yesterday," said Lt. Joseph Murgo. "In these situations, there is always a period of chaos. It is during this time that our training comes into play. Yesterday was an example of several different agencies working together towards one common goal; to tend to the injured and address the loss of life. The East Haven Police Department will take on more of a support role from here on out and will assist the NTSB with whatever else they need moving forward."
The National Transportation Safety Board is back on the scene investigating the plane crash that happened Wednesday morning, and they will begin to remove the plane from the crash site.
A plane on a training flight went down near Tweed-New Haven Airport Wednesday morning just before 10 a.m. The flying student Pablo Campos, 31, of East Haven, died in Wednesday's crash. Police said Campos and Wassef were on board the single-engine Piper PA-38-112.
The plane's wreckagewas discovered by a 23 year veteran of the East Haven fire department, after what seemed to her like an eternity, trudging through sometimes hip deep, frigid,seawater and mud, the plane appeared through the tall pampas grass.
"My first thought was of the of the situation was there was no fire, no smoke. And my second thought was toward the patients," Battalion Chief Eileen Parlato of the East Haven fire department.
Upon checking their pulses,"one of the patients was responding to me, gave me some nods some head shakes when I was asking him questions," said Parlato.
The man clinging to life, Rafayel Hany Wassef, remains in critical condition at Yale New Haven Hospital.
"One of our firefighters actually found some sort of tarp material in the plane and we took that and we use that to actually carry out the first victim," she said.
The other occupant of the aircraft, Campos Isona, who last week posted a selfie to Facebook writing "Another day defying gravity...and the laws of nature."
Parlato confirmed "he did not have a pulse at that time." But, she admits, she expected to find both of the victims deceased
"So, to have that gentleman actually respond to me is what sticks in my head because now I knew there was some hope and maybe something good could come out of this," she said.
A salvage crew, which is been hired by the airplane insurance company, will truck the wreckage to a Delaware warehouse for further examination. The National Transportation Safety Board expects the investigation to take a year.
In October 2016, a plane owned by the same flight school crashed on Route 2 in East Hartford, killing one of the men on board and seriously injuring the other.
The plane crashed in a swampy area near Tweed, behind Roses Farm Road. It crashed in two feet of water and was partially buried in the mud. Crews had to be guided by witnesses and a plane overhead and use ATVs to reach the crash site.
Officials from the Federal Aviation Agency said the crash was classified as accidental.
East Haven Mayor Joe Maturo said the plane took off, made a Mayday distress call, turned around and fell from the sky.
In August 2013, a plane crashed into two homes near Tweed airport, killing four people. The aircraft flipped upside down and crashed into two houses in East Haven during a landing attempt. The crash killed former Microsoft executive Bill Henningsgaard; his 13-year-old son, Maxwell; and two children in one of the homes: 13-year-old Sade Brantley and her 1-year-old sister, Madisyn Mitchell.
Tweed-New Haven Regional Airport is a public airport about three miles southeast of downtown New Haven. It is one of two airports with regularly-scheduled commercial service in Connecticut, the other being Bradley. About 35,000 people use Tweed annually.
