Plane crash survivor recalls hike to safety

BRYANT POND — A 14-year-old girl who survived a plane crash that killed her father and stepmother was recovering Sunday from injuries sustained in the crash and during the ordeal of walking down from the wooded mountain where it happened.

Karen Gray said she did not remember the crash and woke up outside the plane after it apparently clipped some trees and nose-dived onto Mount Will approaching the Bethel airport in Newry on Friday night.

Killed in the crash of the family’s Piper Cherokee were Leroy Gray, a 41-year-old state trooper, and Brenda Gray, 32, of Trenton.

Their bodies were recovered from the wreckage early Saturday, hours after Karen stumbled through the woods, thrashed her way through a stream and found shelter at a farmhouse.

“I can remember flying, then hitting tree tops and hearing a big bang,” the girl said Saturday night after being taken to her mother and stepfather in Bryant Pond.

Recounting her trip down the mountain, she said, “I walked up to this shack and a guy was coming up in his truck. I yelled, `Could you help me? I think I’ve been in an airplane crash.”‘

The Burk family took her in, gave her a change of clothes and called the sheriff.

“The little girl was soaking wet,” Fred Burk Sr. said. “She was so calm. She didn’t say much. She wasn’t even sure she was in a plane crash.

“She was lucid in some things, in others she wasn’t. I understand she was shaken up, but there were no marks on her face. At first, I didn’t believe her.”

The girl’s stepfather told the Lewiston Sunday Sun-Journal that Karen sustained cuts and bruises.

State police and personnel from the warden service and the Oxford County sheriff’s office, notified around 11 p.m., reached the scene about 1:30 Saturday morning.

The Grays had taken off from Bar Harbor bound for Bethel to attend a family gathering.