On the fateful day of April 30, two planes took off from River Falls, carrying Amarillo pickleball team members.
Tragically, only one of the planes arrived many hours later at New Braunfels air terminal. One of the plane’s occupants agreed to sit down with an Amarillo Globe-News reporter to tell his memories of the day, how he is struggling to come to terms with it, and what he is doing to help the families of the crash victims.
The five people killed in the crash were Seren Wilson, Brooke Skypala, Stacy Hedrick, Justin “Glen” Appling and Hayden Dillard.
Leroy Clifford, known as “Cliff,” a former military man and now a stockbroker, said they were getting ready to fly out to New Braunfels for a Minor League Pickleball (MLP) Tournament being held there.
They all agreed to get there a day early, ironically — because the weather might be bad. He said they all traveled to the hangars at the airport in River Falls around 7:30 p.m., in a happy mood.
“We’re all more than friends and pickleball mates; we’re basically like family,” Clifford said. “We were all close and traveled together. It was just fun to be able to do something fun with friends on top of our regular relationship.”
When they all finally reached the River Falls airport, they boarded the two planes. “There were a few members who couldn’t make it that day,” he relayed, “so that could’ve gone a bunch of different ways.”
Clifford said they ended up leaving around 9 p.m., and things were good at the halfway point. “We encountered some turbulence and wind, but that happens in a small plane,” he said.
He said he was watching YouTube videos because they could get WiFi and meanwhile had group texts going on, back and forth with other members on the other plane, joking around with them like they always did. He said after around 30 minutes, he looked around and everyone else was asleep, but that he couldn’t sleep on a plane.
Clifford said he remembered feeling a chill and shaking it off because it gets colder at high altitudes, and he was watching YouTube videos when he decided to read his Bible App. He said he read a few chapters. “I thought I was reading Proverbs, but it didn’t look like Proverbs,” but he didn’t take the time to check it out.
He said the verses were strange and didn’t make much sense, so he was glad when he finished that portion.
Premonition warns of plane going down
At that point, he started listening to music and was jamming out with his earphones on for around 15 minutes, when he had a bad feeling out of nowhere.
“It was kind of like a vision,” he said. “So, the vision led me to feel like I was in the plane with the others. It was almost like a premonition, like everyone’s scared and the plane is going down.”
Clifford said he was very logical, but he has had premonitions before while not thinking about anything in particular.
“I’m getting a bird’s eye view inside the plane, and I’m picturing everybody panicking,” he said. “It’s like the worst is going to happen; I was just feeling the music … and then this vision slaps me.”
Clifford said when he got the vision, he just started praying … crying out to God to save them. “I just cried, ‘God, save us both’ … I felt like we were both in trouble.”
He said he continued praying for God to send his Angels or whatever He could do — “It was almost like a panic,” he said.
“I remember finishing the prayer with, ‘Let your will be done,’” and he said he remembered stories in the Bible where people were saved when they were on their deathbed, and there were other times He would take them.
At that point, Clifford changed his playlist over to some Christian music to calm down. “We were probably 45 minutes away from landing at that point,” he said. He noticed it was getting cloudy and they experienced some turbulence, but nothing out of the ordinary.
‘I don’t know how to tell you this, but we lost radio contact’
Then, the lights of the New Braunfels airport began to show, and they started to decline as everyone woke up. He said it was pitch dark and close to 11 p.m., and they taxied into the large airport to where they were designated.
“Nobody was waiting for us,” Clifford said. “Then our pilot got up and said, ‘Guys, I don’t know how to tell you this, but we lost radio contact with Glen’s plane.’ We all know that’s not good, but that’s all he said.”
“But we were thinking maybe they had an emergency landing or maybe some equipment went out,” he said. “We were kind of in shock at that point, and we kept asking the pilot what it meant. I’m just thinking — even if you have an emergency landing, you usually have your radio contact through the process.”
Clifford said they made their first calls to his buddy Glen’s mother to let them know they lost radio contact and that it wasn’t looking good. He also called Brooke’s husband to let him know and Isaiah, another person on his flight, called a member of Stacy’s family as well as Seren’s father.
He said clouds were coming in and it was starting to sprinkle and getting chilly on the tarmac, and they couldn’t see the flight base operations, which stays open 24 hours. “This airport is so big and dark and we don’t know where to go, and we’re literally stranded on this tarmac,” he said. “We finally radioed the tower, and they said they would send out a search.”
The tower couldn’t give them any information, so after about 45 minutes of waiting on the tarmac, a driver in a pickup saw them, and they waved him down to get a ride to the terminal to get their rental cars so they could go to their Airbnbs.
Storm rolls in as search continues
“As soon as we got to the flight base operations, it started to storm, lightning, and in south Texas, when it storms, valleys overflow, making it difficult to drive,” he recalled. Once they finally got back to the flight base operations, they were still not hearing anything.
One of the other men on his plane said he found a location that was shared with Hayden, who was in the other plane, and it was at Wimberly, Texas, so they decided to drive there, hoping to find them alive and well.
Another passenger was looking on local scanners in the area and spotted a potential fire around Round Rock or Wimberly. Assuming it might be a plane crash, and with no information coming in (as it was an FAA investigation), the group decided to go to the site since they couldn’t get answers and they couldn’t allow an airplane to do a search party because of the cloudy weather.
By that time, it was storming with lightning and everything, Clifford said. They were in an Expedition, so they packed in and began the trek, driving slowly through valleys and hills in rainy, stormy conditions.
Clifford said it took about 45 minutes, and all the way, passengers were scouring social media, calling hospitals and trying to find any information they could on their friends.
Eventually they got to the location — and encountered police vehicles at the edge of the driveway on a dirt road. “A car pulled up behind us, and we were thinking that it was weird because it wasn’t an emergency vehicle, but it turned out to be Seren’s mother and grandmother, from somewhere around San Antonio,” Clifford said.
They talked to a police officer, who told them he can’t tell them anything because it’s an FAA investigation and pointed them to the local police, who told them the same thing and added, “You wouldn’t want to go that.”
“So that was our confirmation that the worst had happened and they had perished,” Clifford said.
It was then around 2:30 a.m., and they had been in shock since around 11 p.m. “We were just standing in the rain, in shock,” and they realized they didn’t even have a place to stay. “The Airbnb was under one of the passenger’s names who was on the other plane,” he said.
Finally, with nothing they could do, they decided to go to San Marcos around 15 minutes away and find a room. He said he called Embassy Suites and got a couple of rooms just to try and rest, along with Seren’s mother and grandmother.
To add to the confusion, the pilot had to be in Dallas the next day, and he had lost his wallet and had no identification or money. Since Clifford knew he probably wouldn’t sleep, he offered to take him to Dallas and get back to Amarillo. Then, Isaiah decided to join them to go back, and they started their trip to Dallas.
Another close brush with fate
Clifford said he had another scare on the way when they were driving in a 75 mph zone on a three-lane highway around 3:30 a.m. in the rain, when he spotted a small light in the middle of the road. He said he didn’t know if his eyes were playing tricks on him from shock or exhaustion, but he kept driving.
“It’s dark, raining, and not much lighting,” Clifford said, “but as soon as my eyes register, I realize that there’s a car hydroplaned, plowed into the median barrier,” and they were heading fast right toward it.
Clifford said he barely had time to swerve and miss it and pulled over to the side to check the driver. The driver was conscious and said he had called an ambulance, and then he looked up and saw a semi-truck and two cars heading toward the scene. It was dark and he had no flashlight, but he jumped around signaling them, and they barely missed him and the wreckage scene.
Then he saw the cars barely miss the Expedition with Isaiah in it, and decided he needed to get back in and go. As he left, he saw the lights of an ambulance and fire truck, so he breathed a sigh of relief.
Clifford said they finally reached Dallas around 7 a.m., and they both started calling their close friends in the pickleball community so they wouldn’t find out on social media. Meanwhile, they headed on toward Amarillo, so they could meet Glen’s family, who was coming from several states away to care for the girls.
“I have a lot of questions that I’ll never have answered in this lifetime,” he said. “But God has been good in this tragedy, and others reaching out to families, loving on them, and being in contact with them through it all.”
The verses he read earlier were titled “A Worried Night,” from The Shulamite and said, “By night on my bed, I sought the one I love; I sought him, but I did not find him … I will rise now and go about the city, in the streets and squares — I will seek the one I love.”
Clifford said that he experiences nightmares and has survivor’s guilt. He admitted that he sought help through a counselor and has gotten some relief from a dream where he heard what he felt was God telling him, “They didn’t suffer,” and that he had shared that dream with others.
Amazingly, some of the families of those lost said they had experienced similar dreams, with their loved ones telling them they “didn’t’ feel a thing,” and that it brought a lot of relief to them all, although the grief is still deep.
How the public can help the families
Clifford said his mission now is to help raise money for the eight children who lost parents. The pickleball group has three tournaments coming up to honor their friends and show them love by giving them financial support, as well as emotional support.
“Five families is a lot,” he said, “and to think about their families.”
Clifford added that the Amarillo Pickleball Club has a Venmo account @AmarilloPickleballClub “Families” and GiveSendGo campaign on their website where people can donate, as well as an account set up through Amarillo National Bank.
Donors can also go to the website of Amarillo Pickleball to donate to Honor the Five. There is also a Dream Ticket tournament were if you place, you get a ticket to the nationals to compete with all other competitors.
The memorial tournaments and events include:
Nell Williams is a staff writer covering trends and other news for the Amarillo Globe-News. Have a story idea? Email her at nwilliams@usatodayco.com .
This article originally appeared on Amarillo Globe-News: Passenger of 2nd plane describes deadly Amarillo team pickleball crash
Reporting by Nell Williams, Amarillo Globe-News / Amarillo Globe-News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Nell Williams, Amarillo Globe-News | USA TODAY Network
