‘I lost someone who was very, very important to me’: Fiancé of pilot killed in crash shares grief

ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. — Loved ones are opening up about the loss of beloved pilot, Marianne Fox.

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Fox died after a plane crash in St. Augustine this past week. She was an Oregon native who had been completing a cross-country trip from her home state when she issued a distress call.

“I am declaring an emergency,” she said over the radio.

“Loving,” “caring” and “dedicated” are a few adjectives that pilot Jim Bourke used to describe his fiancée, Marianne Fox.

“Everybody knew she was good for me, but she was better than they knew,” he said to Action News Jax.

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Fox’s flight tracker showed she went from Keystone Heights to St. Augustine when she began to lose speed and altitude. Bourke said he was flying in a separate plane alongside her when he said smoke started showing and there was some sort of engine problem.

“My flight partner is having engine trouble. The engine is not running well, she’s showing smoke and she’s making a beeline for the airport right now,” he said over the radio the day of the crash.

Fox was flying in an aerobatic plane, but Bourke said this short flight had nothing to do with aerobatics. Bourke explained to Action News Jax that he did his best to guide her to a safe landing, but she ended up off the runway into a marshy area and was trapped upside down in the cockpit. He said he landed as fast as he could but wasn’t able to get to her.

“I taxied the airplane to the float plane ramp and I hailed a fisherman and I got on his boat we went to look for her, but we got stuck,” he said. “I couldn’t get to her.”

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St. Johns County Fire Rescue said its response time was six minutes. Crews had to use an airboat and it took about four minutes to get Fox out of the plane.

Fire Rescue said several factors made this rescue difficult.

Bourke said that Fox later died at the hospital.

“I do know she survived the initial accident, I know she wasn’t at least terribly injured because I saw her at the hospital she was still breathing and had a heartbeat, but she didn’t regain consciousness, so I was able to be with her there,” he said. “The doctors I talked to told me she had drowned, that’s what I understand about what had happened.”

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The two met about 17 years ago and had been dating for the past 10 years. He said their love was unconditional and will miss living life with his fiancée, who was also his best friend.

“We were very close, we spent all of our time together, we traveled a lot together, we have businesses we run together, we fly together,” Bourke said. “I lost someone who was very, very important to me and she was very special to a lot of people.”

The NTSB is investigating this crash. Bourke told Action News Jax he’s spending some time with both his family and Fox’s family, and will prepare Fox’s funeral service in Oregon.

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