Lt. Gov. Bauer pulled from crashed aircraft moments before it explodes

The plane crashed during takeoff Tuesday from a private dirt airstrip near Blacksburg. S.C. Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer and John M. Leonhardt Sr. were pulled from the wreckage shortly before the aircraft exploded. Ledger photo by TARA JENNINGS Two Blacksburg men pulled S.C. Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer and John M. Leonhardt Sr., 70, from the wreckage of a crashed single-engine plane just minutes before it exploded Tuesday evening.

"I'm still shaking," said Jeremy Elliott of Whites Farm Road near Blacksburg. "I just knew I had to help get them out of there. I knew there was fuel in the plane, they had just taken off a couple of hundred feet away. The plane was on fire pretty good by the time we got to them."

Elliott said the power went out at his home and he looked outside and noticed smoke and saw hightension electrical wires were swaying. He ran to the scene of the crash barefoot. One of the passengers was pinned inside the plane, while the other had started to try and pull himself from the aircraft.

"You could tell they had a hard impact," Elliott said. "As soon as we got them out of there the plane exploded."

Mike Easterday, with the lieutenant governor's office, fields questions from the media. AP Photo by MARY ANN CHASTAIN "I was scared to death," said Elliott's lifelong neighbor Alan White. "I was just worried about getting them out."

Bauer, 37, was flown by helicopter to Greenville Memorial Hospital. Leonhardt was flown by helicopter to Spartanburg Regional Medical Center.

The lieutenant governor was in stable condition and in good spirits early Wednesday, said Mike Easterday, Bauer's chief of staff. Both men are expected to make full recoveries.

The two men were in Cherokee County at the nearby Holly Grove Catering, paying respects to Margaret D. Moorhead, who died Saturday.

Cherokee County Sheriff Bill Blanton said Bauer's plane crashed moments after it took off at approximately 6:30 p.m. Tuesday from a private, dirt air strip owned by Wayne Thomas at Highway 198 and Whites Farm Road. The sheriff said the plane cleared the nearly 100-foot drop off at the end of the runway, but nose-dived into a creek a short distance away and caught fire.

The plane clipped a power line, which was severed and started a brush fire. Firefighters had to wait for Broad River Electric to cut off the power to the downed lines before they were able to extinguish multiple fires. A foam concentration was used to douse the flames.

The aircraft has dual controls, so authorities were not immediately able to determine who was flying the plane, Blanton said. Bauer has a valid pilot's license. The plane was a Mooney M20E fixed-wing single-engine aircraft registered to

Bunk Aviation in Columbia, according to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

Officials with the FAA arrived at the crash site late Tuesday. Sheriff's deputies will continue to help secure the scene while authorities investigate. The S.C. Law Enforcement Division, the Buffalo and Blacksburg fire departments and Cherokee County Emergency Management Division and Haz-Mat team responded.

Bauer, who is the nation's youngest lieutenant governor,

entered politics a decade ago and served in the House and Senate before being elected to his current post in 2002. He will face Mike Campbell, the younger son of the late congressman and two-term S.C. Governor Carroll Campbell, and Anderson surgeon Dr. Henry Jordan in the Republican primary in June. The winner will face unopposed Democrat nominee Robert Barber, a Lowcountry restaurant owner and former legislator, in the November general election.