As he spent the last minutes of his life in the sky he loved so much, Kim Garner may have been thinking of more than flying. Not long before he took off from Clearwater Executive Airpark, the thought of going to jail led him to put a gun in his mouth, according to a police complaint. A woman told Clearwater police Garner threatened to shoot himself after he raped her at gunpoint.
But no one will know for sure what the Palm Harbor man was thinking Oct. He died when the Cessna crashed shortly after 10 a. The rape occurred about 12 hours earlier at the airpark where the year-old was a flight instructor, according to the statement the victim gave police. The victim, a year-old Largo woman who said she had been Garner's mistress for about five years, called.
She told police Garner was afraid he would go to jail. He made her promise not to call police, but a counselor persuaded her to do so. What, if any, role the incident played in the plane crash is unknown. A National Transportation Safety Board investigation is incomplete. However, board investigator Corky Smith said he has found no structural, mechanical or control problem in the plane. He knows police investigated a rape report, but he is not investigating the possibility of suicide as a crash cause because "we found no evidence of a suicide note.
Neither Garner's wife, Judith Evans, nor the woman who reported she was raped could be reached for comment. But Mark Chianese, a pilot who often flew with Garner, said his friend would not commit suicide. Garner would often circle low over his parents' house in Pasco, he said, about a quarter-mile from the crash site. Shaw said she knew nothing about a police investigation of a rape at the airpark, although police gathered evidence from the airpark. Graphic details of the rape are in a page police report, which said the woman had scratches and bruises on her wrists and ankles.
The woman told police Garner had promised several times to marry her. She had broken off their relationship after his wife called in August, asking if she and Garner were having an affair. She said Garner continued to call, stalked her and was emotionally abusive. He drank four beers in an hour while they played pool at a Largo pub. They then went to a steak house about p. They planned to go bowling, but Garner said he wanted to go to his airpark office to change his pants.
