Photo Courtesy The Clarendon Enterprise
CLARENDON, TEXAS 3:26pm The Texas DPS just sent us the following release about the emergency landing. We have included the entire release exactly as it was sent to us.
Emergency Aircraft Landing
Donley County - on the 16th of January at approximately 10:20 pm 54 year old Lambert Little of Clarendon made an emergency landing near the Clarendon airport.
Lamberts 172A Cessna Fixed wing single engine landed in a pasture 1.5 miles south of the Clarendon airport last night. The Clarendon area was experiencing dense fog. Lamberts aircraft struck something while on the ground and it caused his Cessna to flip over trapping him. The Donley County Emergency units extracted Lambert from the Cessna.
Lambert was injured but is stable at NWT hospital. The FAA is investigation the crash to determine its cause.
2:20pm The Associated Press is reporting that the pilot's name is Lambert Little, the incoming city manager for Clarendon. The AP report confirms he does not have life threatening injuries, and that his dog, a cocker spaniel-poodle mix, was not injured.
10:57am Lt. Col., CAP Rich Simerson with the Tigershark Composite Squadron of the Civil Air Patrol out of Amarillo tells Pronews 7 that crews from his command aided in the search for the missing plane this morning. Air and ground crews with the CAP got called out approximately 2:30am this morning.
Simerson says crews discovered the plane on it's back, but in one piece around 8:00am this morning. The pilot was still inside the plane, and while the full extent of their injuries was unknown, they appeared to be minor. He says that the pilot was transported by ambulance to a local hospital, but he did not know which facility that was. He added that the hospital would be where official information on injuries would need to come from.
When search teams discovered the plane, the pilot's dog was running around near the plane, and Simerson says the dog was uninjured after the ordeal. The CAP ground crew remains at the scene of the emergency landing. Simerson tells Pronews 7 that it is standard procedure for CAP to provide security for sites until FAA investigators arrive.
Simerson says that he cannot release the pilot's name, as that falls under the FAA's jurisdiction.
10:41am We just received word from a Texas Department of Public Safety spokesman, Daniel Hawthorne, that the pilot is uninjured and walked away from the scene. He says that troopers described the event as an emergency landing.
Hawthorne says that DPS troopers were only on the scene for a short time, and the Civil Air Patrol has taken over at the site.
10:18am A quick search of the plane's tail number revealed that the aircraft was registered to John L. Little out of Hamilton, Texas. Hamilton is about 100 miles southwest of Ft. Worth.
We do not know who was piloting the plane at this time.
10:06am Pronews 7 has confirmed a plane flying from Abilene to Clarendon crashed Sunday night.
Family members of the pilot, who was flying a Cessna 172, reported him missing around 12:45 Monday morning. Local officials launched a search and rescue mission, finding the plane upside down near the Clarendon airport early Monday morning. While there is no word on the pilot's condition, we do know he was transported to a local hospital.
Investigators from the Federal Aviation Administration are expected to investigate the cause of the crash.
