12/11/99

By Rudy Larini and Russell Ben-Ali
STAFF WRITER

The four were on their way to a holiday party on the East Side of Manhattan. It was to have been a whirlwind evening -- a flight from Virginia in a private plane one of them had borrowed, a limousine ride into the city and a couple hours of merriment before being driven back to New Jersey for the return flight home.

One of the passengers, an avid outdoorsman accompanied by his wife, was to have gone duck hunting in the Virginia countryside the next morning.

But the quartet -- two men and two women -- never made it to the party. Their flight ended in a fiery crash Thursday evening just before they were to have landed at Teterboro Airport in Bergen County. The twin-engine plane went down in a residential neighborhood in Hasbrouck Heights, miraculously missing homes and people on the ground.

The victims have been identified as Paul A. Pedersen, 37, the plane's pilot and owner of a Virginia aviation firm; Roland T. "Chip" Brierre 3rd, 41, of Charles City, Va., and his 40-year-old wife, Cary; and Elaine Moses, 35, of Richmond, an office assistant and bookkeeper for Pedersen's company. The Brierres had left an 8-year-old son, Roland T. 4th, with his grandparents in Virginia.

Pedersen was described by neighbors in Chester, Va., a suburb of Richmond, as a hard-working aviation executive who lived quietly with his wife, Elizabeth, a legal secretary, and their 5-year-old son, Drew.

But his pilot's license had been suspended for 45 days in January 1998 in the aftermath of a 1996 accident in which he crashed a small plane in Maryland, according to Federal Aviation Administration records. Pedersen was cited by the FAA for inadequate preflight planning and preparation, as well as mismanagement of his fuel supply when he crashed a Cessna 310 into a wooded field in Pasadena, Md.

The fiery explosion that accompanied Thursday's crash indicates it could not have been caused by a lack of fuel, federal aviation investigators said.

As of yesterday, authorities had not identified the victims of the crash, but their identities were confirmed by family members and friends.

The four victims were to have spent several hours at the Manhattan party before flying back to Virginia Thursday night. The affair was being hosted by a floral designer who knew Chip Brierre from fishing excursions to Bermuda.

For the family of Cary Brierre, hers was the second violent death they have had to endure in less than eight years. Her father, Theron P. Bell 3rd, an executive at one of Virginia's leading banks, was killed in a May 1992 collision with a drunken driver who was being chased by police.

Her mother, Jeri, and sister, Jennie, declined to comment yesterday from their homes in Virginia. She also has a brother, Theron 4th, who could not be reached.

Relatives and friends described Chip Brierre as an outdoorsman who loved to hunt and fish. He owned a boat sales company, Commonwealth Boat Brokers in Glen Allen, Va., another suburb of Richmond.

''He loved boats. He learned to sail at an early age and he wanted to be his own man," said his mother, Barbara Brierre, who said she has been divorced from Chip's father, Roland T. Jr., for 20 years.

She said her son has had his nickname since birth.

''My mother said he was a 'chip off the old block,'" she said. "He looked just like his dad, so that's what we called him."

She said her son and his family own a 15-acre estate along the James River.

Mrs. Brierre said she had been at her son's office only a half-hour before he was to leave for his flight to New Jersey, and he was looking forward to his first trip to Manhattan. She suggested that he pass by the Chrysler Building, where her father, Robert E. Manley, had been an oil company executive for many years.

''He left on a high note, I can tell you that," she said.

The Brierres met while attending college in Virginia, Chip at Hampden Sydney College and Cary at Longwood College.

''This is a real shock, the loss of two close friends," said Stephen Conte, a Richmond lawyer and the godfather of the Brierres' son.

''We just started hunting together 20 years ago and became close friends," he said, adding that their trips took them as far as Alaska and Central America.

''We're all just sort of numb right now," said Michael Sandusky, another hunting and fishing companion of Chip Brierre.

Sandusky described Brierre as "the most gregarious person I ever knew. He never met a stranger."

He said both Brierre and Pedersen were friends of the airplane's owner, Gregory Stoneman of Ashland, Va., who had loaned them the 19-year-old, six-seat Beechcraft Baron for the flight to New Jersey. Stoneman yesterday said he did not want to talk about the crash or the victims.

Pedersen was the president of Southern Virginia Aviation, which operates under the trade name Sundance Aviation. The firm has a contract with Hanover County, Va., to run the Hanover County Municipal Airport, from which the ill-fated flight departed Thursday afternoon. Sundance Aviation also operates other air services, including custom tours of the Richmond area and quick overnight pickups and deliveries.

Sundance Aviation's attorney, Charlie Hundley of Richmond, said he was surprised to see a mountain of toys stacked next to Pedersen's desk when he opened the door to the victim's airport office yesterday. Pedersen had posted signs all over the airport asking pilots and others to contribute to the young victims of Hurricane Floyd, Hundley said, and the response was overwhelming.

''He was one of the principal organizers of a program to have people in the aviation community donate and deliver toys as part of a Christmas celebration for the children of some of these families who lost everything," Hundley said.

Pedersen was the son of the late Paul A. Pedersen Sr., a former naval pilot and U.S. Naval Academy graduate. After leaving the Navy following World War II, the elder Pedersen became a commercial pilot with his own aviation company. Hundley said he was known as "something of a legend around the Richmond area" for his flying expertise.

The younger Pedersen never served in the military, but learned to fly through his father, Hundley said. The victim was a certified, "instrument-rated" pilot and flight instructor who also had a license to operate a helicopter, according to FAA records.

Federal aviation investigators attributed Pedersen's 1996 crash to "the pilot's inadequate preflight planning/preparation and inadequate management of the airplane's fuel supply, which resulted in fuel exhaustion and a forced landing at night."