At about 5pm on May 19,2006, a Tomahawk crashed at LaPorte Airport. I arrived just after it happened and was wondering about all the commotion when I drove up. There were several news helos hovering around the airport.

The airplane, N2378K, went off the end of runway 30, collided with a fence and flipped over. The pilot was a student pilot out for some practice. He was injured and taken away by Life Flight helicopter. My understanding is that his injuries were not life-threatening.

The pilot was taking off on runway 30 and the interesting thing was that the wind was favoring Runway 12. As a matter of fact, I found some preliminary investigation information which indicated the airplane was taking off with 10 or more knots of tail wind component. That's weird.