Skip to content or view mobile version

Home | Mobile | Editorial | Mission | Privacy | About | Contact | Help | Security | Support

A network of individuals, independent and alternative media activists and organisations, offering grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues.

PHOTOS-Mike Connell, Witness in Bush/Rove Vote Tampering, Dies in Plane Crash

Clayton Hallmark | 24.12.2008 17:04 | Anti-racism | Repression | Terror War

Michael Connell, 45, webmaster to the stars of neocon-dom, died instantly just before 6 p.m. Friday (Dec. 19) in a plane crash while landing at the Akron-Canton Regional Airport in Ohio.
Connell had supposedly testified by deposition in a federal court case just 6 weeks earlier in a case that Republican/neocon operatives had long attempted to quash.  http://moritzlaw.osu.edu/electionlaw/litigation/documents/Lincoln-Response-11-4-08-ExA.pdf

Deposition just one month ago
Deposition just one month ago

Notorious clients
Notorious clients

Flight track ends prematurely
Flight track ends prematurely

Flight log just before crash
Flight log just before crash

Crash site
Crash site

Firefighters quickly extinguish flames that engulfed fuselage.
Firefighters quickly extinguish flames that engulfed fuselage.



1
The original complaint, filed Aug. 8, 2006, alleged that in the 2004 election in which George W. Bush narrowly won Ohio (a key election state), election officials, especially then-Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, deprived African-Americans and students from voting freely and having their votes properly counted. The suit also mentions "private contractors" and "breaking "the bi-partisan chain of custody of ballots," presumably where Michael Connell and a company called SmarTech in Chattanooga, TN, figure in.
Connell's website shows (or did show) a long client list of neoconsertive politicians and predatory corporate interests.
2
Michael L. Connell and his wife Heather operated the website- and IT-consulting firms New Media Communications (technomania.com) with offices listed as at Suite D, 3046 Brecksville Rd. in Richfield, OH, and another firm, GovTech Solutions (govtechsolutions.com) with offices at 302 N. Cleveland-Massillon Rd. in Akron, OH. Neocons hire New Media to get elected and GovTech afterwards.
According to FlightAware's Live Flight Tracker service, Connell had flown his plane, a single-engine Piper Saratoga with the tail number N9299N from Akron-Canton to the College Park, MD, airport near Washington, DC, on Thursday morning, December 18, 2008. According to the Stark County (OH) coroner, Connell had on him a receipt for a breakfast he had in Washington on Friday, Dec. 19. He flew back home that afternoon using the same airports, as the map shows.
3.
The flight log shows everything going normally up to and including the last notation. Connell was at 3300 ft and about 6 or 7 minutes out from the airport. It was at about this point that he would have throttled back the plane's engine and begun a steady descent.
4
Four minutes later, instead of Connell being at less than 1000-ft altitude near the airport, he was flying very low and very fast from the west over houses on Charolais St. in Uniontown, OH. The Piper impacted the front yard at 2017 Charolais St. NW; plowed through the grass, taking out a flag pole and a circle of landscaping blocks around it; and slid and tumbled past the vacant (foreclosed) house and across the driveway and into a swing set. The tail rested near a basketball hoop and a small group of pine trees. Michael Connell died instantly.

5.

The Greentown fire department had received a 911 at 5:55 p.m., arrived within 4 minutes, and put a small fire on the exterior of the house and another in the fully engulfed fuselage, all in another 5 minutes. Wreckage was strewn over 100 yards.

6.

Connell was an experienced pilot with an instrument flight rating.

CONNELL, MICHAEL LOUIS
Airman's Address :
AKRON, OH
FAA Region : Great Lakes
Date of Medical : Oct, 2007
Class of Medical : 3
Expiration of Class 3 : Oct, 2009
Airman Certificates : Private Pilot
Airplane Single Engine Land
Instrument Airplane

He owned the plane and was experienced in flying it. The registered owner is a company at the same address as New Media Communications. The plane reportedly is based at the Akron-Canton Airport. The pilot himself lived in Bath Township (Jeffrey Dahmner's old home town).

-number : N9299N
Aircraft Serial Number : 3257018
Aircraft Manufacturer : PIPER
Model : PA-32R-301T
Engine Manufacturer : LYCOMING
Model : TI0-540 SER
Aircraft Year : 1997
Owner Name : SIERRA-NOVEMBER AVIATION INC
Owner Address : 3046 BRECKSVILLE RD
RICHFIELD, OH, 44286-9399
Type of Owner : Corporation
Registration Date : 21-Aug-2007
Airworthiness Certificate Type : Standard
Approved Operations : Normal

Julie Fano said the house at 2017 Charolais St. had been vacant since the spring. She and her husband, Joe, were eating dinner when they heard the plane’s engine cutting in and out.

Apparently the plane had entered an abnormal flight condition called a "stall," in which the propeller is unable to provide enough air flow over the wings to provide the lift to keep the plane from falling. A stall can normally be recovered from unless the engine is unable to deliver adequate power, or control surfaces on the wings or tail are inoperable. It will take months before the National Transportation Safety Board renders a verdict on the cause of the crash.
Weather was apparently not a factor.
If the engine had failed, Connell should have been able to make an emergency landing in a nearby field, as all pilots are trained to do. It is possible that he panicked and that the cause will be ruled as "pilot error."
--------------

Clayton Hallmark

Upcoming Coverage
View and post events
Upcoming Events UK
24th October, London: 2015 London Anarchist Bookfair
2nd - 8th November: Wrexham, Wales, UK & Everywhere: Week of Action Against the North Wales Prison & the Prison Industrial Complex. Cymraeg: Wythnos o Weithredu yn Erbyn Carchar Gogledd Cymru

Ongoing UK
Every Tuesday 6pm-8pm, Yorkshire: Demo/vigil at NSA/NRO Menwith Hill US Spy Base More info: CAAB.

Every Tuesday, UK & worldwide: Counter Terror Tuesdays. Call the US Embassy nearest to you to protest Obama's Terror Tuesdays. More info here

Every day, London: Vigil for Julian Assange outside Ecuadorian Embassy

Parliament Sq Protest: see topic page
Ongoing Global
Rossport, Ireland: see topic page
Israel-Palestine: Israel Indymedia | Palestine Indymedia
Oaxaca: Chiapas Indymedia
Regions
All Regions
Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World
Other Local IMCs
Bristol/South West
Nottingham
Scotland
Social Media
You can follow @ukindymedia on indy.im and Twitter. We are working on a Twitter policy. We do not use Facebook, and advise you not to either.
Support Us
We need help paying the bills for hosting this site, please consider supporting us financially.
Other Media Projects
Schnews
Dissident Island Radio
Corporate Watch
Media Lens
VisionOnTV
Earth First! Action Update
Earth First! Action Reports
Topics
All Topics
Afghanistan
Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-Nuclear
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Fracking
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Policing
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista
Major Reports
NATO 2014
G8 2013
Workfare
2011 Census Resistance
Occupy Everywhere
August Riots
Dale Farm
J30 Strike
Flotilla to Gaza
Mayday 2010
Tar Sands
G20 London Summit
University Occupations for Gaza
Guantanamo
Indymedia Server Seizure
COP15 Climate Summit 2009
Carmel Agrexco
G8 Japan 2008
SHAC
Stop Sequani
Stop RWB
Climate Camp 2008
Oaxaca Uprising
Rossport Solidarity
Smash EDO
SOCPA
Past Major Reports
Encrypted Page
You are viewing this page using an encrypted connection. If you bookmark this page or send its address in an email you might want to use the un-encrypted address of this page.
If you recieved a warning about an untrusted root certificate please install the CAcert root certificate, for more information see the security page.

Global IMC Network


www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa

Europe
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
brussels
bulgaria
calabria
croatia
cyprus
emilia-romagna
estrecho / madiaq
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
liguria
lille
linksunten
lombardia
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
napoli
netherlands
northern england
nottingham imc
paris/île-de-france
patras
piemonte
poland
portugal
roma
romania
russia
sardegna
scotland
sverige
switzerland
torun
toscana
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
chiapas
chile
chile sur
cmi brasil
cmi sucre
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso
venezuela

Oceania
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india


United States
arizona
arkansas
asheville
atlanta
Austin
binghamton
boston
buffalo
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
dc
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
sarasota
seattle
tampa bay
united states
urbana-champaign
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
Armenia
Beirut
Israel
Palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
fbi/legal updates
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech