NEWS

Cape Cod man hurt in plane accident

JACK COLEMAN,STAFF WRITER

Michael Packard was in a Costa Rican hospital after a crash that killed three others.

PROVINCETOWN - A Cape Cod charter boat fisherman was badly injured in a plane crash in Costa Rica Thursday that killed three others, according to a family friend and a Costa Rican newspaper.

Michael Packard, 38, the son of renowned painter Anne Packard, was one of at least six passengers on board a Sansa airline flight from San Jose, the Costa Rican capital, to Porta Jimenez, a fishing port some 80 miles away.

According to family friend Rita Rozen of Scituate, Packard is in stable condition at Cl?nica B?blica, a Catholic hospital in San Jose. Rozen said that Packard suffered severe facial injuries and multiple broken long bones in his arms and legs.

Packard runs his boat, the Mar Huron, out of Provincetown in the summer and brings it to Costa Rica to work winters there, according to Rozen.

Rozen said she learned about the crash from a representative of the Sansa airline, who called her yesterday.

Three others on the plane were killed, including both pilots. At least four others survived.

Rozen, who with her husband, Richard, runs a charter fishing boat in Hyannis during the summer, has sought in vain to learn more about her friend.

"Since then I have not heard any information and I am getting nervous," Rozen said.

Rozen and her husband live in Scituate and are also next-door neighbors to Michael Packard in Golfito, Costa Rica.

Two other Americans, John Brandon and Maurine Brandy, were also on the plane and survived the crash, according to a Web site for a San Jose newspaper, The Nation.

Packard attended Cape Cod Regional Technical High School in Harwich. He and his wife, Bibi, have no children.

He was apparently able to call out on the plane's radio after the crash, Rozen said. It took rescuers several hours to reach the plane, which emitted an emergency beacon.

The crash site was apparently in a remote location that was difficult to reach.

A photograph from the Web site of a second Costa Rican newspaper showed rescuers carrying out the victims on a litter.

The works of Packard's mother, who also has three daughters, have been displayed at the Louvre in Paris, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and the Metropolitan Museum in New York City.

Rozen, a registered nurse, wants to go to Costa Rica to help bring Packard back to the United States for medical treatment.