Safety advocates to meet tonight about two Las Vegas airplane crashes

By Mary Manning

Wednesday, Sept. 3, 2008 | 12:26 p.m.

After two separate airplanes crashed into two homes, killing four people in less than a week, a citizens group concerned with safety plans to meet tonight.

Pilot William J. Leahy, Jr., 38, of Redwood City, Calif., died Thursday in a fiery crash after a Piper PA-31-350 Navajo Chieftain, owned by Aeronet Supply of Gardena, Calif., went down after leaving North Las Vegas Airport.

Leahy was the only person aboard the aircraft and had no enforcement actions against him, said Ian Gregor, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration. The plane did not have any reported accidents before it crashed into a North Jones Boulevard house, Gregor said after checking records.

Less than a week before, on Aug. 22, pilot Mack Creekmore Murphree, 75, of Dayton, Nev., crashed an experimental airplane into a house, killing himself and Jack and Lucy Costa who were inside the house.

The organization, Not Tonight! NLV Airport Gave Me a Headache, has scheduled a meeting at 6:30 p.m. today at the Advent United Methodist Church, 3460 N. Rancho Drive.

"We are going to make these lives our battle cry," said Linda West Myers, co-founder of Not Tonight! "We will bring everyone together and not stop until our neighborhood and NLV Airport live in a non-lethal, safe peaceful coexistence."

The group wants to bring private and commercial pilots, residents and business owners together to unite to find solutions to a safer North Las Vegas Airport.

"When the planes fly over my house and I can offer the pilots a cup of coffee, then I know they are flying too low, and one day I might return home and find my home and children on fire," said Sharon Gobel, mother of three small children.