sounds like it was a freak accident. it was dark, perhaps the pilot was being inattentive. it's hard to walk into the propeller of a plane like this, though.
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Lauren's parents Cheryl and Jeff Scruggs said that they believe the 23-year-old walked back toward Richmond's plane at the private airport north of Dallas to say a final thank you, perhaps as he was preparing to take off again.
While investigators look into the events leading up to the tragic accident, many are speculating as to why the propeller was left running in the first place. ABC News Aviation Consultant John Nance says that most of the time pilots would never let a passenger in or out with the engine and the propeller running.
"The pilot of a bird like an Aviat Husky is going to in almost all cases shut the engine down completely and have the propeller stop, which happens almost immediately as soon as you shut it down," Nance said. "Because we know the danger of having a human being anywhere close to a twirling prop."
Nance agrees that she may not have known that she was in the vicinity of the spinning propeller when she was struck, adding that the engine on a small airplane makes far more noise than the propeller does, and she would need to be acutely aware of the physiology of the airplane to be able to detect it.
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