Canoe

Tuesday, August 29, 2000

F-16 jet crashes

TULIA, Texas (AP) -- An Air Force reservist on a training mission was killed Monday night after the F-16 he was piloting crashed in a Texas field, officials said.

The single-seat fighter jet went down near Tulia, about halfway between Amarillo and Lubbock. It was not carrying any bombs or live munitions, officials said.

Pilot Stephen Simons, 41, of Fort Worth, was returning from Hill Air Force Base, near Ogden, Utah, on a training mission when the plane went down, killing him, said Maj. Clayton Church, a spokesman for the Naval Air Station Fort Worth.

There was no immediate word on what caused the crash. A trooper with the Texas Department of Public Safety said the jet apparently clipped a nearby barn before it went down in a plowed field and scattered debris for about a quarter of a mile.

-- Rachel Gibson (rgibson@hotmail.com), August 29, 2000