Woman dies after plane propeller hits her head

Woman dies after plane propeller hits her head

The woman worked for a southwest Ohio skydiving company.

According to a report from The Associated Press, a 24-year-old woman has died from her injuries after a plane propeller hit her head in Middletown, Ohio.

Sarah Rhoads, the office manager at Start Skydiving, walked into a spinning airplane propeller on Sunday. The AP says that Rhoads died Tuesday at a hospital in Dayton.

Start Skydiving owner John Hart said Sarah likely walked into the propeller on accident as she made her way to the plane to ask the pilot if he needed any food, WHIO.com reports.

“She just made an error,” Hart told the Hamilton-Middletown Journal-News. “Usually the propellers are going so fast, you can’t see them. She probably walked around the nose and didn’t see it.”

Sarah was greatly admired at her job. “She was awesome,” Gene Newsome, a manager at Start Skydiving, told FoxNews.com.

The Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA) notes that accidents and human injuries from propellers are not widespread. However, they are usually serious. In 2000, for example, the AOPA says that 14 accidents took place that were blamed on the propeller: two were propeller strikes resulting in human injuries and the other 12 were classified as propeller system failures.

According to WHIO.com, the Federal Aviation Administration is investigating the incident at Start Skydiving.

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