Diver says he found plane in lake

Posted: April 29, 2005

A private dive company operator said on Friday that he located a single-engine plane that crashed in Lake Michigan on Monday night. He did not find pilot Jonathan Leber's body, he said, but did see the cell phone on which he made his final call for help.

Jerry Guyer, owner of Pirate's Cove dive company, said he used coordinates of where Leber's plane went off the radar - eight miles straight out from the center of the Hoan Bridge - and searched using advanced sonar equipment on his boat Thursday. At noon, the sonar revealed what appeared to be the plane, and he marked the spot, planning to return Friday to search.

On Friday, Guyer said, he dived alone into the 41-degree water and could see the plane beginning at 80 feet below the surface. Guyer said he dived to the bottom - about 160 feet - to find the plane nose-down on the lakebed. The plane's door was open and a cell phone was next to the plane in the sand, Guyer said.

Leber's rented single-engine Piper Archer went into Lake Michigan about 11:40 p.m. Monday after he ran out of fuel on his way back from visiting a friend in Hamilton, N.Y. He sat on top of the plane while making a 911 call for help as the aircraft sank into the water. U.S. Coast Guard officials searched immediately for Leber after receiving a call from Mitchell International Airport, which had tracked his aircraft on radar. A 15-hour rescue effort found no sign of Leber or the plane.

Guyer, who often looks for wreckage and assisted authorities last year when two girls drowned in the Milwaukee River, said there was no way Leber could have swum to shore, given the water's temperature.

"After 17 minutes in the water with the best wetsuit and underwear money can buy, I was already shivering cold myself," he said.

Altogether Guyer said he was in the water for 30 minutes. He brought a video camera but said he didn't have time to use it because he spent time searching for Leber's body because he wanted to give the family closure.

Jeff Baum, president of the Wisconsin Aviation Program, which owned the plane, said it's now the insurance company's call on whether to recover the wreckage.

"We're obviously much more interested in recovering the body than the airplane," he said.

Matt Teeuwen, an insurance adjuster with Phoenix Aviation Managers, the Minneapolis-based insurance company for Wisconsin Aviation Program, declined to comment Friday, citing a pending investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board.

Leber's parents, John and Kathy Leber of Springfield, Va., said they received word from the U.S. Coast Guard that the plane had been found by Guyer.

"The body wasn't found, so he used the last resource, which was to swim," said Kathy Leber. "He used every means that he had to survive, which is what he was used to doing. He's a fighter. He wanted to survive."

A memorial service for Leber is planned for 10:10a.m. Monday in the gymnasium at Maranatha Baptist Bible College in Watertown, where he was a junior majoring in biblical studies with an emphasis on missions. He planned to become a mission aviator and start churches along the Amazon River, his family said. He had been a licensed pilot since 2002.

Leber's family plans to meet with U.S. Coast Guard officials Monday to thank them for their rescue efforts, and visit the crash site.