CA:Jet's wheel drops onto street near L.A.

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Jet's wheel drops onto street near L.A.

SOUTH GATE -- A nose wheel fell off an American Airlines Boeing 757 during approach to Los Angeles International Airport on Tuesday -- falling down onto a street, bouncing diagonally across the street and coming to rest next to a woman who was entering a church. No one was hurt.

Flight 2425 from Dallas-Fort Worth landed safely with 105 passengers and six crew members on board, said John Hotard, a spokesman for American Airlines. Every plane has two nose wheels and can be landed with just one, he said.

The right nose wheel fell around 1:30 p.m. into a gutter next to the sign for Albertson's supermarket at the northeast corner of Madison Avenue and Firestone Boulevard in South Gate, a city of 92,000 about 10 miles east of the airport, said police Sgt. C.R. Smith.

It then bounced catty-corner across Firestone, which is 80 feet wide, and into the parking lot of St. Helen's Roman Catholic Church at the intersection's southwest corner, Smith said.

The Rev. John Provenza, the head of the parish, said the wheel was traveling so fast that it looked as if it would have destroyed anything it hit. But, miraculously, it touched nothing and no one.

What of the woman who was entering the church at the time?

``Maybe she prayed a little harder,'' Provenza said. ``By the grace of God, it could have really been bad.''

http://www.mercurycenter.com/premium/local/docs/wheel15.htm

-- Carl Jenkins (Somewherepress@aol.com), March 15, 2000


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