Officer: Barker, DJ AM "Visibly Shaken" After Crash

Officer on the scene of Friday's horrific plane crash describes meeting the critically injured Travis Barker and DJ AM

By Josh Grossberg, Whitney English Sep 23, 2008 6:49 PMTags
DJ AM, Travis Barker plane crashAP Photo

Travis Barker and Adam "DJ AM" Goldstein were "visibly shaken" and "hollering a little bit" as first responders arrived at the site of Friday night's horrific plane crash.

Lt. Josh Shumpert of the South Congaree Police Department in Columbia, S.C., spoke to E! News about his encounter with the injured Blink-182 drummer and popular club spinner shortly after they barely escaped from the doomed Learjet that left four others dead.

"The guys were standing on the side of the road, on Highway 302, with a couple of citizens around them," the officer said. "They were in pain, I reckon. They kept asking where the ambulance was and telling me they had friends on the plane. I told them I couldn't get to it because the plane was engulfed in flames."

Shumpert—who was the second emergency official on the scene just after airport police and whose patrol car's dashboard camera recorded parts of the inferno—said that both Barker and Goldstein were lucid enough to describe for him how they climbed out of the wreckage.

""They said they slid down the right side of the plane to get out," Shumpert recounted. "They were somewhat on fire at the time, and they rolled around on the ground and jumped on each other to put the fire out."

The officer also contradicted news reports that the musicians were found naked.

"Travis was wearing a black stocking cap, no shirt, but pants or boxers. You could tell the DJ guy's hair was singed off and he had cuts on his face," said Shumpert. "They were both pacing back and forth in circles."

(Another eyewitness, truck driver William Owens, told E! News earlier that AM helped Barker remove his pants after exiting the wreckage.)

Shumpert said while the pair waited for the ambulance, Barker asked for some water and was given a Gatorade. Shortly after that, EMS turned up and transported the two men to a nearby trauma center.

Both men are expected to make full recoveries.