Pilot died ‘doing what he loved,’ mother says

Jean Leahy recounted Friday how as a child her son loved to watch planes touch down at the Denver airport.

Accompanied by his mother, "he would sit at the end of the runway and identify all the airplanes," she said. "He was only three years old."

Leahy confirmed that her son, 38-year-old William Leahy Jr. of Redwood City, Calif., died Thursday afternoon when the twin-engine airplane he was piloting crashed into a house a mile short of the North Las Vegas Airport runway. She said her son, a pilot since his early 20s, came from a family of aviators.

"He died doing what he loved," she said in a phone call from California.

Married for 13 years, William Leahy was the father of three young children.

Authorities said he was the only person in the Piper Navajo Chieftain when it crashed into the garage of a two-story house at 2828 N. Jones Boulevard, near Cheyenne Avenue. The five people in the house at the time of the crash escaped serious injury. Authorities initially believed 10 people were in the house.

It was the second plane to hit a house near the airport in less than a week.

The plane that crashed Thursday experienced engine trouble shortly after takeoff. Witnesses said it clipped power lines before somersaulting into the house.

The plane was registered to Aeronet Supply of Gardena, Calif. Calls to the company weren't returned.

Leahy was in the class of 1993 at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in New York but did not graduate, according to the academy's register of graduates and former cadets. His brother Michael said he left West Point because of back problems and went on to attend Moody Bible Institute's Missionary Aviation program.

Federal Aviation Administration records show that Leahy, whose sister is an airline captain and whose father retired from the airline industry, was a certified airline transport pilot, the highest rating for a pilot, with sea and land commercial privileges for single-engine planes. He also was an FAA-certified airframe mechanic and authorized to conduct engine inspections.

In 1997, Leahy founded International Aerospace Solutions Inc., which employed licensed pilots to ferry planes for private and commercial use throughout the world.

His mother said he flew commercially into the Las Vegas Valley and was planning to fly the plane that crashed to South Korea.

She said her son intended to land Thursday in Palo Alto, Calif., to install additional fuel tanks so that the plane could make the trek to South Korea.

Leahy also flew for Mission Aviation Fellowship, which contracted with him to fly overseas. Earlier this month, he completed a 5,500-mile trip to Sentani, Papua, in Indonesia.

"Bill owned his own company, but he was a friend of MAF," said company spokeswoman Dianna Gibney. The Idaho-based organization uses a fleet of planes to shuttle Christian workers, evangelists and supplies to remote areas around the world.

She said that whenever the organization needed to swap one of its foreign-based planes with a plane in the U.S., Leahy would make the long flights to deliver the new plane overseas.

"He was an expert at flying planes over the ocean," she said.

FAA spokesman Ian Gregor said no records were immediately available on any disciplinary action against Leahy or incidents involving the Piper Navajo Chieftain he was flying.

"We've had two horrible tragedies in a small geographic area within six days of each other, but there's no apparent link to them," Gregor said. "Restricting who can land and take off at a particular airport is not a solution because it doesn't provide any guarantees that a crash won't occur."

At a news conference Friday afternoon, Clark County Aviation Director Randall Walker said his agency always recommends that local governments avoid building homes close to airports, especially under flight paths. But they don't have to follow the recommendations.

Airport officials planned to follow the investigation into the crash and continue looking for ways to make flying around the valley as safe as possible.

"It doesn't help to talk about what could have been or what should have been," Walker said. "We have to deal with what is"

Michael Leahy said his brother was a spiritual man who put his family first. He speculated that his brother did everything he could to make sure there were no other deaths in the crash.

"Knowing who he is, I know he would have gone to the utmost degree to cause no harm or injuries to anyone else," he said. "It's pretty miraculous considering what could have happened."

On Aug. 22, Mack Creekmore Murphree, 76, crashed an experimental aircraft into a house, killing him and an elderly couple inside the house. Like Leahy, Murphree was an experienced pilot.

Reporters Brian Haynes and Lawrence Mower contributed to this report. Contact reporter Antonio Planas at aplanas@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4638. Contact reporter Keith Rogers at krogers@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0308.