Christian Oliver who appeared in Speed Racer dies alongside his daughters aged 10 and 12 in Caribbean plane crash
The horrifying moment when a small aircraft plunged into the sea, killing an American actor, his two pre-teen daughters and the pilot, off of a tiny Caribbean island was caught on video.
The tragedy occurred Thursday 4th of January, 2023 in the waters off Bequia, which is part of St. Vincent, around noon.
In one video circulating on social media, a person recording can be heard saying: ‘The plane crashed! Call the Coast Guard!’
The victims have been named by the local police as Christian Klepser, 55, his daughters, Madita, 10, and Annik, 12. The pilot was Robert Sachs. He also owned the plane involved. The family arrived in the area on December 26.
Klepser was a German born actor who went by the stage name Christian Oliver. He appeared in major movies such as Speed Racer and Valkyrie. Among his first roles in the US was a long-standing stint on Saved by the Bell: The New Class in 1995.
The group were en route to St. Lucia when the crash occurred, authorities said. Moments after taking off from JF Mitchell Airport in Bequia, the plane got into unspecified difficulties.
St. Vincent-based news outlet Searchlight reports that Sachs radioed the tower shortly after takeoff to tell them he was experiencing trouble and was turning back. That was the last communication.
In an interview with local media outlet iWitness News, a local fisherman criticized the coast guard’s response to the tragedy.
‘We explained to them that the tide was now starting to run so if you left it (the wreckage) there, it was a (possibility) that we wouldn’t find the plane again, that it would drift off,’ he said.
He added that the tide’s trajectory would have taken the plane to open water. Using ropes and a buoy to mark the location, the fishermen took the decision to retrieve the bodies themselves.
While another official told the outlet that the coast guard should have kept personnel in the area until the wreckage was fully recovered.
The unnamed fisherman said that he was close to the area where the plane impacted the water and arrived at the scene as it sank to the seabed.
When the coast guard arrived, the fisherman said that they were told to wait for official divers to arrive before the bodies could be retrieved.
Cornell Campbell, who witnessed the crash, told iWitness that the plane drew is attention because of the ‘sound of the plane, the engine, the propeller.’
‘Everything shut off the first time. So, I told my friend, “That plane is going to crash.” But the plane kicked up back again like it built up back a power,’ he said.
Campbell explained that the plane regained power but had lost altitude during the initial failure. As the pilot attempted to correct the dive, the power appeared to go again and it ‘just dived down.’
“But when it sinking, something went “Bouff!” in the water and that is why I said it exploded. So that is the only thing I heard when the plane was sinking. It went “Bouff!” under the water,’ Campbell said.
Another witness, Tyrone Durham, a retired coast guard officer described his view of what happened to iWitness.
‘It seems as though the power cut out or the engine failed and then I came out from under the tree and looked at the plane. It seems as though it was turning to head back to the airport but then with the wind, because I don’t think it had reached the [cruising] altitude so it was apparently going back to the airport,’ he said.
‘That’s when the wind took control of it and it came down and plunged into the water.’