New Jersey Medic Responds to Father`s Fatal Plane Crash

WAYNE, N.J.-- In a tragic twist, a medic who responded to a fiery plane crash on a suburban New Jersey street found to his horror that the pilot who died was his father, it was reported last night.

Andrew Coppolo, 55, of Atlantic Highlands, N.J., went down in a fireball on a street in Wayne Monday evening. The burning plane took out several mailboxes before screeching to a halt in the driveway of a home on Nellis Drive.

His son, Scott Coppolo, 25, works at nearby St. Joseph's Hospital and responded to the scene, unaware the crashed plane was his father's Beechcraft, which had been headed for Essex County Airport, WABC/Channel 7 said, quoting the town's police chief.

The highly experienced pilot, who'd taken off from North Carolina, reported no problems in the minutes before the crash.

Coppolo, a pilot for 30 years, had a commercial license and taught students to fly fixed-wing planes and helicopters.

"The air was his comfort zone ... He would go over checklist after checklist. He wanted to make sure everything was right," Maggie Coppolo, 19, said of her father.

Republished with permission of The New York Post.