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U.S. jet saw attack on church workers
Compiled from Times wires © St. Petersburg Times, published April 22, 2001 IQUITOS, Peru -- A U.S. government surveillance plane flying over northern Peru had identified a small aircraft carrying American missionaries as a possible drug flight and passed the information to the Peruvian air force shortly before a Peruvian fighter jet shot it from the sky Friday morning, news agencies reported Saturday. Two of the five people aboard the plane, a woman and her infant daughter from Michigan, were killed in the shooting and crash. The U.S. Embassy in Lima announced Saturday that drug interdiction flights had been suspended, "pending a thorough investigation and review by Peruvian and U.S. officials of how this tragic incident took place." The missionaries' hydroplane was en route from the Brazil-Peru border to Iquitos, about 625 miles northeast of Lima, when it was attacked, said the Rev. E.C. Haskell, spokesman for the Association of Baptists for World Evangelism, based in New Cumberland, Pa. Survivors told how the pilot, a second-generation missionary, was shot in the leg during the flight and lost control of the burning plane before managing to guide it into the Amazon River. The craft floated on pontoons for a half hour before the passengers were rescued by villagers. Peru's air force confirmed that the missionaries' single-propeller Cessna 185 plane was shot down after it was detected by "an air space surveillance and control system" run jointly by Peru and the United States. The U.S. government plane, a twin-engine Cessna Citation jet, was piloted by a civilian working under the auspices of the U.S. Embassy in Lima. The U.S. Customs Service operates such flights routinely over Peruvian airspace in search of low-flying drug-runners. Under a longstanding intelligence-sharing agreement with Peru, the United States passes information on suspect planes to the Peruvian military, which has a policy of intercepting the aircraft and forcing them to land or shooting them down. Between 1994 and 1997, Peru shot down about 25 suspected drug planes on their way to Colombian cocaine refineries from coca-growing regions in Peru. The Peruvian air force said the missionaries' plane entered Peruvian air space from Brazil without filing a flight plan and that it was fired on by an A-37B turbojet after the pilot failed to respond to "international procedures of identification and interception." But Mario Justo, chief of Iquitos' airport, said the plane had a flight plan and that its pilot was in radio contact with Iquitos' airport control tower, offering periodic reports on his position. In Quebec, President Bush said, "The United States is certainly upset by the fact that two citizens lost their lives. I will wait to see all the facts" before assigning blame. In Friday's shooting, missionary Veronica Bowers, 35, and her 7-month-old adopted daughter, Charity, were killed and pilot Kevin Donaldson was wounded. Also on board and unhurt were Bowers' husband, Jim, 37, and their 6-year-old son Cory. The family is from Muskegon, Mich. Donaldson is from Morgantown, Pa. The missionary group, which helps found Baptist churches in the Iquitos area, has worked in Peru since 1939, according to its Web site. Jim Bowers' brother, Phil, who was not on the flight, said his brother told a Peruvian air force colonel that the military made no attempt to communicate over the radio before two or three military jets opened fire on the small plane. Bobbi Donaldson, wife of the pilot, said her husband guided the plane into the Amazon, where it flipped over. Veronica Bowers was holding her daughter on her lap when a bullet struck her in the back and then hit the child, Bobbi Donaldson said in Iquitos. "There were two rounds of fire," and a Peruvian jet fighter continued to fire as the plane went down, she said.
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