PLANE KILLS JOGGER Published May 28, 2010 By Russ Bynum The Associated Press HILTON HEAD ISLAND, S.C. -- A 38-year-old father of two was jogging and listening to his iPod when he was hit from behind and killed by a small plane making an emergency landing on the beach, authorities said March 16. Robert Gary Jones of Woodstock, Ga., was killed instantly on Hilton Head Island on the evening of March 15, said Beaufort County Coroner Ed Allen. The single-engine plane had lost its propeller, and the pilot's vision was blocked by oil on the windshield, Allen said. The aircraft was basically gliding. "There's no noise," said aviation expert Mary Schiavo, a former inspector general for the National Transportation Safety Board. "So with his ear buds in and the plane without an engine, (it's) basically a stealth aircraft. Who would look up?" Hilton Head fire and rescue spokeswoman Joheida Fister said the pilot and a passenger on the Experimental Lancair IV-P plane were not injured. The plane left Orlando at 4:45 p.m. and was headed for Virginia, Fister said. It started leaking oil at about 13,000 feet and tried originally to make it to Hilton Head Airport, she added. The oil on the windshield blocked the pilot's vision, and he told authorities the propeller came off the plane. When he tried to land on the beach near the Hilton Head Marriott Resort and Spa, the plane hit the jogger and came to rest a little farther down the beach, she said. "It's pretty unusual," Fister added. Jones was married and had two children, the coroner said. He was on a business trip and was looking forward to heading home to celebrate his daughter's third birthday. The National Transportation Safety Board lists 14 incidents involving the home-kit-assembled Lancair IV-P since 2005. Eight of them led to 15 deaths.