Plane-crash teen makes it home

A teenager who survived a small-plane crash, then made her way off a rugged Washington state mountainside, finally made it home to Bellingham, just as word came that searchers had located wreckage.

Aerial searchers spotted wreckage, but crews were not able to reach the heavily wooded, north-central Washington site. No positive identification has been made of the plane or of its two other occupants, Leland and Sharon Bowman, of Marion, Montana, said Barbara LaBoe, a Washington state Transportation Department spokeswoman.

Survivor Autumn Veatch, 16, said the Bowmans, her step-grandparents, did not survive the Saturday crash. She provided searchers with clues to the location of the wreckage.

The teen was released from Three Rivers Hospital, in Brewster, and arrived home in Bellingham shortly before midnight to the apartment of her father, David Veatch. Bruised by the impact of the crash, fearing an explosion and knowing she couldn’t help the other victims, she had headed down the steep slope, following a creek to a river, the river to a trail and the trail to a highway, where she hitched a lift on Monday.