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Pilot Mike Charles lowered flowers for dead pilots near crash site days before his death
Kaieteur News – Three days before Lieutenant Colonel Michael Charles and his four colleagues were killed in a helicopter accident, the veteran Guyana Defence Force (GDF) pilot had honoured two dead pilots who were killed in a plane crash 50 years ago at the same location, President Dr. Mohamed Irfaan Ali revealed on Sunday.
An emotional President Ali on Sunday
President Ali was at the time giving the feature address at the commissioning ceremony of the ‘Heroes Highway’ which was named in honour of the fallen soldiers. The President recalled Lieutenant Colonel Charles lowering down two wreaths into the dense jungle, where he himself ended up losing his life three days later. Ali said that Charles did the endeavor in memory of the dead pilots.
“Mike Charles was determined, in memory of a crash in the same area, to lower two wreaths for two pilots who died in that crash,” Ali said, while adding, “ He {Charles} and {Major} Anson Weekes {another GDF pilot} proceeded on one of their flights to the interior to make these wreaths with flowers.”
Ali described the act by Charles as an act of “selflessness.”
Lieutenant Colonel Michael Charles
“50 years after the crash, the love was there and he went and do something in their honour, how many humans would do something like that,” Ali told those in attendance of the road commissioning ceremony.
Michael Charles is popularly known by Guyanese for the beautiful photos he takes of the hinterland regions, Guyana’s landscape and the country’s biodiversity, while flying across the country on GDF missions. He had been a GDF pilot for decades and on Wednesday last, he and his co-pilot Lieutenant Andio Crawford and engineer, Corporal Dwayne Jackson, was tasked with a mission to fly four high-ranking GDF officials, Brigadier Retired, Gary Beaton, Colonel Michael Shahoud, Lieutenant Colonel Sean Welcome and Staff Sergeant Jason Khan to Arau, a location at Guyana’s western border with Venezuela.
The soldiers left Base Camp Ayangana around 09:23hrs but stopped along the way at Olive Creek to refuel the helicopter. Shortly after taking off, the helicopter crashed in the forested area enroute to Arau. The GDF said that the chopper’s Emergency Locater Transmitter (ELT) signal went off around 11:20hrs.
The crash site was located on Thursday but Charles and four his colleagues did not survive. His crew members, Jackson and Crawford made it out alive.
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