WHEELING, W.Va. - The teen who escaped death in a Coney Island plane crash by a quirk of fate knelt, wept and prayed Sunday night at a makeshift shrine to her fallen friends at their West Virginia school.
Melissa McCulley, 18, was one of the Four Musketeers - an inseparable band of friends and seniors set to graduate from their tiny Catholic school Tuesday.
Two of the teenage girls, the father of one and a Queens pilot perished when the single-engine sightseeing plane crashed on the Brooklyn beach Saturday.
McCulley survived because she had to get off the Cessna 172S in New Jersey because of airsickness.
The tragedy left the fourth friend, Katie Beiter, who stayed behind to run in a track meet, and the entire town of Wheeling asking why.