ANGLER MAY HAVE HEARD CRASH
By DAVE SALTONSTALL and BILL HUTCHINSON DAILY NEWS
STAFF WRITERS
Daily News (New York); News; Pg. 22
July 21, 1999, Wednesday
TISBURY, Mass. Victor Pribanic may be the only person to have heard John
F. Kennedy Jr.'s airplane crash.
An attorney from Pittsburgh, Pribanic was fishing Friday for striped bass off
Squibnocket Point, the remote southern tip of Martha's Vineyard, when a loud
noise broke the silence of night.
"I heard an explosion over my right shoulder," Pribanic said yesterday in the first
interview he has granted since the crash that killed JFK Jr.; his wife, Carolyn
Bessette Kennedy, and her sister Lauren Bessette.
"It sounded like an explosion. There was no shock wave, but it was a large
bang."
Pribanic, 45, who has spent his summers on Martha's Vineyard for 20 years,
pinpointed the source of the sound about 4 miles offshore, near Nomans Island.
He said that just before hearing the noise, . But he could not say for certain if it was
Kennedy's plane or if it was the source of the bang.
The lawyer scratched the top of his crew-cut head as he described how he
peered out at the dark waters and saw nothing but the black of night.
but you have to appreciate how bad it gets out there at
that time of the night," Pribanic said. "The water and the horizon are indistinct.
You can't tell the difference."
Pribanic said he fished until 1 a.m., pulling in one large striper before heading
home to bed.
When he woke up Saturday morning, he heard the initial reports that
Kennedy's plane was missing and felt a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.
He immediately phoned the Martha's Vineyard Airport. Officials there put him
in touch with West Tisbury police, who relayed his information to the National Transportation Safety Board.
It wasn't really hazy.
That's the same report I got from family on the Vineyard. It wasn't hazy that night.
Okay, it wasn't hazy. JFK Jr. had working instruments. There was no reason for him to have turned at all on that point of the flight path. He knew where he was. He did not sound either lost or in distress in the radio conversation on the ground as reported on Boston TV news. And he was well within sight of the lights of Gay Head given his position on radar.
Consider, if a man standing on the shore can see an airplane up in the sky, on the same approach path that JFK Jr. would have been on, then the airplanes in the sky on that approach could see the shore.
Quod erat demonstradum. JFK Jr. could see the lights of Martha's Vineyard.
