Fell in front of first-graders — new details of the motor-hang glider crash
Yesterday afternoon, April 14, a motor-hang glider crashed near the museum in Strochytsy. As a result of the crash, pilot Ruslan Ivanov and his 26-year-old passenger died. First-graders from a Minsk school, who came to the ethnography museum for an excursion that day, witnessed the tragedy. A father of one of the schoolchildren told an Onlíner journalist about this.
— Yesterday my child was on an excursion at the ethnography museum in Strochytsy. As I understood, they took everyone from the entire grade who wished to go. When we were walking home with the child, he started to tell me that during the excursion he saw a hang glider take off and then fall, and how ambulances arrived afterward. At first, I thought the child was just recounting some plot from a game, but in the evening, after reading the news, I realized that the children saw everything in reality.
The teacher who accompanied the children during the excursion clarified that not only first-graders but also second-grade students were on the trip.
— We were standing near the village school when the motor-hang glider took off. The children, naturally, started watching the flight. Literally twenty seconds later, it began to descend sharply. It was clear that it was falling. We were quite far from that place, so we only heard the sound of the apparatus hitting the ground. We stayed on the excursion for about twenty more minutes and then left. We only saw ambulances and rescuers rushing to that spot. It's horrible, of course, to realize that you witnessed such a tragedy…
The 'Avia-Minsk' aeroclub is located in the agro-town of Azyartso on the territory of the Belarusian State Museum of Folk Architecture and Rural Life. Its runway is located slightly away from the excursion routes.
— Yesterday we had 13 excursion groups, — they said at the museum. — Groups usually have between 12 and 25 children. I didn't work yesterday, but I know for sure that the excursion routes did not pass close to the crash site — near the windmill.
— We couldn't reach the founder of the aeroclub, Dzmitry Matkouski — both his numbers have been unavailable since early morning. Can you tell us what's happening with flights now? — the correspondents asked.
— All we know is that flights have been suspended indefinitely.
The motor-hang glider crashed around 3 PM at the end of the runway, not far from the windmill. As a result of the fall, pilot Ruslan Ivanov and his 26-year-old passenger died.
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