CHAPEL HILL - Jim Durborow was sitting in the Delaware Veterans Post near Wilmington on Monday when the bartender rang the PT boat bell.

There had been an accident. A plane piloted by post member Thomas Pitts, a former Marine, had gone down in North Carolina.

The bar grew quiet, Durborow said. The bartender, with a snap of his wrist, rang the small bell again and said Pitts had died.

Durborow, 70, later got up and attached a message to the board on the wall: "Thomas Pitts passed away today doing what he loved to do - flying. Semper fi."

As friends in Delaware grieved, a federal investigator arrived in Chapel Hill Tuesday to try to learn what caused Pitts' Cirrus SR20 to crash at Horace Williams Airport.

The crash killed Pitts and injured two others. Pitts' friend and co-pilot Jim Donahue was in critical condition at UNC Hospitals last week. The second passenger, Kyle Henn, was released Wednesday.

Pitts had flown to Chapel Hill so Henn, 22, could be with his family in Raleigh as they mourn the loss of his older brother, Nathan Henn. The 25-year-old aid worker was killed in Uganda last Sunday when bombs went off among crowds watching the World Cup finals.

A friend had asked Pitts to fly Henn to North Carolina.

"Pittsy - we called him Pittsy - he was real outgoing," Durborow said. "A real giving type, not looking for something coming back."

On Tuesday, Henn's family released a statement:

"We are so grateful to both of the pilots for everything they did on our behalf and are both touched and broken by the events," the statement read. "Our thoughts and prayers are with them and their families."

The investigator from the National Transportation Safety Board will examine the wreckage; review radar, communications, medical and maintenance records; and interview witnesses, said spokesman Keith Holloway. Investigations like this typically take a few days to complete, but the full report can take a year or more.

The single-engine Cirrus SR20 has a full-plane parachute, but a safety expert with the Cirrus Owners & Pilots Association said he thinks the parachute on Pitts' plane activated on impact.

If someone inside the plane had pulled the handle in mid-air, the parachute would have fully opened, said Rick Beach, chairman of the Cirrus Pilots Proficiency Program. Photographs show the parachute bunched and extended behind the plane, he noted.

"The fact that it was taut would seem to indicate it never had a chance to slow the aircraft down before impact," Beach said.

There have been 4,621 Cirrus SR20 and SR22 planes produced since 1999, and there have been 65 fatal accidents and 129 total deaths in that time, Beach said.

There have been 19 parachute "saves," with 40 survivors, he said.

All told, the aircraft have a fatal accident rate of 1.7 per 100,000 flight hours. That compares to a rate of 1.2 for all general aviation (noncommercial and nonmilitary) flights. But the latter number includes twin engine corporate jets often flown by two pilots. When those are removed, the Cirrus rate is comparable, according to the Cirrus Owners and Pilots Association website.

Although Pitts served in the wing division in the Marines during the 1960s, he got his pilot's license after retiring from Xerox about six years ago, said friend Kevin Reilly, who worked with Pitts for about 25 years.

Pitts and Reilly volunteered for Warrior Weekends, flying wounded soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center to New York City, Philadelphia and the Jersey shore.

Both Pitts and Donahue were "fun-loving characters, just really great guys," said Reilly. "But they were just as focused as they could be when they were behind the controls."

Durborow, Pitts' friend at the Delaware bar, called the two men "the best of friends."

"You know, it just seems like the wrong people buy it early," he said.