Friend: Pilot knew route well

MACON - Investigators tried Saturday to determine what caused Friday night&#39;s plane crash that killed four people but spared a 12-year-old girl. <br> <br> National Transportation Safety Board investigators began removing the wreckage of the 1977 Piper Cherokee Six, first cutting the engine from the badly burned fuselage. The tail had separated from the rest of the plane and lodged in a tree about 50 feet away. <br> <br> The only survivor of the crash in Jones County, northeast of Macon, was 12-year-old Kani Howard. She was listed in stable condition Saturday night at the Medical Center of Central Georgia. <br> <br> A friend who flew the Ohio-to-Thomasville route several times with pilot David Pryor said he can&#39;t believe that he got lost or ran out of fuel. <br> <br> Richard Belford of Columbus, Ohio, said Pryor flew several times a year to Georgia to visit his wife&#39;s mother and grandmother. Pryor often stopped in Macon, where he and his wife met at Mercer University in the late 1970s. <br> <br> ``It was a routine thing for him, almost like a regular route,&#39;&#39; said Belford, president of the Phoenix Flying Club of Columbus. He called Pryor a cautious and experienced pilot, with about 600 hours in the air. <br> <br> The Jones County Sheriff&#39;s Office identified those killed as Pryor, 46, of Columbus, Ohio; his wife, Marilyn W. Pryor, also 46; their son, Thomas DaWit Pryor, 5; a family friend, Lisa Howard, 39, also of Columbus, and her daughter Kani Howard. <br> <br> Jones County coroner Jerry Bridges was amazed that Kani Howard survived, let alone walked a mile to a nearby road and flagged down a passing car. <br> <br> ``She didn&#39;t have any injuries it&#39;s just like an angel plucked her out of the plane,&#39;&#39; he said. <br> <br> The coroner&#39;s office retrieved the four bodies Saturday and sent them to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation in Atlanta for physical identification.

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