News of a mysterious radio transmission heard three days after a missionary pilot went down in Venezuela has stirred hope for friends searching for him.
McMinnville resident Bob Edwards, who just returned from searching for Bob Norton, said radio operators in Venezuela told him they had received a weak, six-second transmission from the jungle three days after Mr. Norton’s plane went down. Operators told him they recognized English words and got the general direction of the signal but did not know what was said.
Mr. Norton, an Adventist Medical Aviation pilot from Jackson County, Ala., and six other people in his plane last were heard from Feb. 16. Mission group officials said the group was near the Gran Sabana area on the border of Venezuela and Brazil.
“If that was them three days after the crash, that’s definitely a good sign,” Mr. Edwards said.
Mr. Edwards and Robbie Norton, the missing pilot’s son, spent last week in Venezuela checking out several “points of interest” the volunteers had identified, but they did not find any signs of the plane or its occupants.
See Sunday’s Times Free Press for complete story.
Andy began working at the Times Free Press in July 2008 as a general assignment reporter before focusing on Northwest Georgia and Georgia politics in May of 2009. Before coming to the Times Free Press, Andy worked for the Anniston Star, the Rome News Tribune and the Campus Carrier at Berry College, where he graduated with a communications degree in 2006. He is pursuing a master’s degree in business administration at the University of Tennessee ...
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