Family of New Bedford Crash Victim Hires Own Investigator

Allentown attorney John Karoly Jr. has retained a prestigious aviation law firm -- the same New York firm that represented many families of victims of the Sept. 11 attacks -- to follow the investigation into the plane crash that killed his brother, Peter, his sister-in-law and a pilot.

Karoly, who has questioned whether inactive airfield lights had a role in the crash, hired Kreindler & Kreindler, a firm started by the late Lee S. Kreindler.

Kreindler is regarded as the father of air disaster law and handled the lawsuits after the 1988 bombing of Pan American Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, and the Trans World Airlines Flight 800 crash off Long Island in 1996.

Karoly, who has built his legal career on taking on police, insurance companies and other powerful institutions, is not planning on taking any formal legal action at this time but wants to keep a close eye on the situation, said Donald Pugh, an employee speaking on Karoly's behalf.

James P. Kreindler, Lee Kreindler's son, said the firm also will conduct its own investigation, to help determine whether a manufacturing defect or negligence on behalf of the New Bedford Regional Airport could have contributed to the accident. He said if they find anything of note and decide to file a lawsuit, they could act as early as March.

Visibility was low Friday evening when Peter Karoly, 53, who had a pilot's license, his wife, Lauren Angstadt, 54, and Michael Milot, 23, a pilot employed by Peter Karoly, took off. The trio had been flying from Boston to New Bedford, Mass., for a dinner engagement. Authorities have not said who was piloting the plane.

There was rain and a ceiling of fog, but that is nothing unusual, said Arthur G. Allen, chairman of the Massachusetts Aeronautics Commission. The single-engine turboprop Socata TBM-700 attempted to land around 7:45 p.m. but failed to see the runway. It then circled around before crashing in a marshy area about one mile west of the airport.

John Karoly has spoken out against the airport, blaming the accident on a set of lights shut off roughly four months earlier by the Federal Aviation Administration.

Allen said the FAA did so because of overgrown vegetation, which partially obstructed them. The airport kept the lights off pending approval to clear the protected wetlands by various local agencies -- despite a complaint signed by 14 local pilots.

Crews of inmates and New Bedford city employees have been clearing the brush since Monday, when the city's Conservation Committee granted emergency certification, New Bedford spokeswoman Elizabeth Treadup said.

Allen said although he strongly supports giving airport managers the power to sidestep such bureaucratic processes -- which can take months, even years -- he emphasized that the airport had all of the required lights up and running at the time of crash, "and then some." The lights in question were an additional safety measure that lit the area around the runway.

"Many airports don't even have those landing systems," he said, and pilots "don't worry about it."

Little is known about the cause of the crash, said Paul Schlamm, a spokesman for the National Transportation Safety Board. The wreckage has been moved into a hangar, where a team will sift through the debris for the following week. They then will listen to recordings of the aircraft's communication with the control tower, as well as preflight telephone conversations.

Schlamm said they'll also review the plane's maintenance history, as well as the pilots' training and experience. The entire process can take six to eight months, depending on the agency's overall caseload.

He said nationwide there are 1,700 to 1,800 small plane crashes a year.

Peter Karoly and Angstadt, of Bethlehem, were well known in local civic and business circles. Karoly was recognized as one of the region's top malpractice lawyers and previously owned the Allentown Ambassadors, a minor league baseball team. His wife was a dentist.

The Milot family declined comment, but friends said Milot, of New Tripoli, first flew solo when he was 16 years old.

He was a natural, said Andrew Wells, a friend and former co-worker. "He was really sharp, really smooth with the controls. He always knew what to do."

He grew up flying with his father, John, who was also a recreational pilot, Wells said.

"He lived for it," said Glenn Frey, a physics teacher at Northwestern Lehigh High School, who lives just blocks away from the Milots.

While other students dozed through lectures on vectors, Milot brought in homemade videotapes of cross-wind landings to help illustrate the material, he said.

Frey called Milot "a focus point" among his friends, someone with the ability to study hard but also "relax and laugh with the rest of the gang."

When the teacher received word about six months ago that Karoly had employed Milot as a commercial pilot, Frey was thrilled. "His dream finally came true."

Beyond his life in the sky, Milot ran track, helped run the school newspaper and participated in Boy Scouts, said Northwestern High Principal Dennis Nemes. He excelled as a hunter.

Milot was the second of three recent Northwestern Lehigh graduates to die in the last week and a half. Capt. Mark T. Resh, an Army pilot from Lowhill, was killed Jan. 28 when his helicopter was shot down in Iraq, and Brandon Van Parys, a 20-year-old Marine from Lynn Township, died Monday conducting combat operations in Iraq's Al Anbar province.

After Milot graduated in 2001, he received his pilot's license from Gateway Aviation, based at Allentown's Queen City Airport. He eventually became a flight instructor there, where he befriended Wells.

The two shared a love for NASCAR and Wells remembers spending a night with Milot and his family in the infield at Pocono Raceway. Dale Earnhardt Jr. was always a favorite.

Milot was "an overall good guy," Wells said, someone who "always had a smile on his face."

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