> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.shayinformed.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # A year later, the people who survived the UPS plane crash remember the day and the people who never left it - URL: https://www.shayinformed.com/a-year-later-the-people-who-survived-the-ups-plane-crash-remember-the-day-and-the-people-who-never-left-it/ - Published: 2026-10-26T10:30:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-26T10:29:59.000Z - Author: Shay McAlister **Four Grade A Auto Parts survivors open up about what they saw, who they carried, and the people who never made it home, one year after UPS Flight 2976.** --- At 5:12 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2025, Ashley Muse shut down her computer. The last customer of the day had been weighed and paid. Ashley walked to the back of the single-wide trailer that served as the scale house office at Grade A Auto Parts, to do what she did at the end of every shift: take a cold Coke out of the refrigerator for the drive home. "The power went out in the trailer," she told me. "It's not necessarily uncommon. But it would usually come right back on. It would just be like a glitch, and it would come back on, but it didn't that day." Nobody panicked. Semi drivers hit power poles out there all the time. It was a Tuesday. It was almost quitting time. Within seconds, four people in four different places on that property would see the same thing: fire, rolling toward them across the ground. Some had only moments to decide whether to run, hide or fight their way through a burning building. One year later, those four people are still going to work. They are still greeting customers by name. And when you ask how they are doing, they will tell you they're okay. "We're okay, but we're not okay," said Manuel Leos, the company's operations manager. "But we have to say we're okay because we have to give people hope." --- *This is what happened on that property, told in the words of the people who were there. It is also the story of the people they lost: coworkers who were their friends, and customers who were something closer to family.* *I am an independent journalist, fully funded by subscribers. You can* [*support important work like this for $4.99/month*](https://www.shayinformed.com/a-year-later-the-ups-crash-lawsuits-are-still-waiting-to-begin/#/portal/signup) *and gain access to my in-depth reporting, investigations, podcasts, and weekly newsletter.* *Want to listen instead of read? This week's episode of One More Question with Shay McAlister goes inside the story. Listen below.* --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8c/19/8c19890d-f21a-4442-8055-5db9783cac58/content/images/2026/10/Adam-Bowman.JPG) Adam Bowman Adam Bowman has worked at Grade A for 15 years. He manages the non-ferrous yard. On the day of the crash, his schedule changed because of a truck that never showed up. "We had a truck that was supposed to be in there at about 10 in the morning, because we always load everything early because we get really busy in the afternoons," Adam said. "Megan called me and said that the truck canceled." Megan Washburn was the coworker he worked with most. She found a replacement truck, but it would be arriving late in the day. Megan volunteered to stay late and help him. At four o'clock, the truck arrived. Adam loaded it. And as he went back and forth, he noticed something about the line at the scale. "The line was really long, because it does get long at the end of the day, and it came out of the building and down the side of it and wrapped around and came back," he said. "I was thinking there's going to be a lot of people upset because they probably wouldn't get weighed out in time." Adam normally opened a second scale at 4 p.m. to help with the rush. That day he was busy loading the late truck, so his coworker Alain Rodriguez was working the scale alone. "Alain got everybody out of there as quick as he could, and he didn't just lay down and say I ain't got any help, so I'm not going to try any harder." Adam said Alain "wasn't that kind of guy." Adam climbed off his forklift and that's when he heard it. "I heard the turbine engine, and when I turned to look, I first saw one flying in the air already," Adam said. Then he turned over his shoulder and saw a fireball heading his way. He had a split second to choose- run for the woods behind the building, with no idea what was coming. Or take cover. "I thought I could jump in between these bales, and it'd keep anything from hitting me. But I may burn up. Or I could try to run toward the woods," Adam said. "I didn't know what was going to be coming at me, so I just took my chances and dove in between the bales and balled up as tight as I could, and obviously it got extremely hot." When the explosions stopped and he stood up, the building he had worked in for 15 years was burning. "There was cars flipped over in the parking lot on fire, and it would just look like a bomb had exploded," he told me. The first thing he thought of when looking around was the same thought all four survivors had. "I immediately thought nobody made it," Adam said. "That everybody was gone." ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8c/19/8c19890d-f21a-4442-8055-5db9783cac58/content/images/2026/10/Ashley-Muse.JPG) Ashley Muse Across the property, inside the office trailer, Ashley Muse and her coworker Megan had walked to the front and looked out the window. "All you could see was a ball of fire coming straight for us," Ashley said. "We had maybe seconds before it hit us." Everyone started yelling and ran toward the back office. "When the fireball hit the building, it shook like an earthquake, and it took everyone off their feet," she said. "I remember the bookshelf had fallen over in the back office, and someone had to lift it off of me for me to be able to get back up." The back door was blocked. The canopies outside had collapsed in front of it and trapped them inside. "I remember thinking in that moment, we're going to die," Ashley said. "Everything was just filled with black smoke and flames, and I could hear people crying and yelling out. I could hear Fedon's granddaughter crying in the background, and then I heard him saying, 'Take the baby, take the baby.'" ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8c/19/8c19890d-f21a-4442-8055-5db9783cac58/content/images/2026/10/Screenshot-2026-10-19-at-12.51.59---PM.png) Kimberly Asa (3), Lou Fedon There was one way out: a window on the back wall. People were trying to climb through it. Megan, the coworker Ashley calls the "mama bear" of the office, took charge. "Megan said we have to go for the window. Go, go, go. And she just kept kind of pressing my back and pushing me towards the window," Ashley said. "I remember looking into the middle office, and it was nothing but flames." Ashley remembers jumping out the window and running. She ran as fast and as hard as she could. When she made it to the road, she fell to her knees. "I was shaking," Ashley said. "Everything after that was kind of in and out. I just sat in a daze." She told me she knew almost immediately that her office coworkers- Trina Chavez and Megan Washburn- had not gotten out. "Megan, you know, she was right behind me, and I can still feel her hand on my back," Ashley said. "And she wasn't there with me." ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8c/19/8c19890d-f21a-4442-8055-5db9783cac58/content/images/2026/10/Manuel-Leos-2.JPG) Manuel Leos Manuel Leos has worked for Grade A for 21 years. He is the operations manager and the company's chairman of safety. At 5:05 that afternoon, he was in his office, near the break room, going over the plan for the next day with Jamel Beard, the yard manager, who has been with the company for 14 years. Then the power went out. "I felt some form of an earthquake," Manuel said. "Everything is shaking, and like explosions. And then I'm like, what is that?" Jamel went to the door. "I looked out the door, and I just saw a fireball, black smoke," he said. "Then it kept coming." Jamel yelled the only word his mind could find. "A train!" He had worked next to the tracks for years. It was the only thing that made sense. "I just turned, ran for him, tackled him," Jamel said. "We landed in front of his desk. I still have some fragments in my back from it." On the floor, Manuel believed he was about to die. "My thought process was, I'm dying here. This is how I'm going to die," he said. "I was not in a panic mode. I just accepted what was happening." They were alive. But the door was buried. "Our door is blocked by refrigerators, coke machines, tables, chairs, and everything," Manuel said. "The momentum of the explosion went towards our door and just blocked our door. We couldn't get out." Jamel began to fall apart. "He starts yelling, screaming, saying that we're going to die there. We're not going to be able to get out. Everything is on fire outside," Manuel said. "I said, you need to shut the hell up. We're going to get out of here." They pushed and climbed. Manuel lost his left shoe. They pulled each other over the debris. And in the chaos, Jamel was looking for someone. "He told me to quit looking. I was looking towards the left," Jamel said. "Trina is the mother of my kids, so he just kept yelling at me, telling me, 'Come on, we gotta go. We gotta go.'" They made it out. Seconds later: "About three seconds after we got out, it was a big explosion," Manuel said. "The place where we were at exploded. So if we were there a little bit longer, we'd have been gone or dead." ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8c/19/8c19890d-f21a-4442-8055-5db9783cac58/content/images/2026/10/Screenshot-2026-07-13-at-2.56.23---PM.png) Matthew Sweets Adam Bowman was running toward the fire. He knew he wasn't supposed to. The company's safety advisor had told them in every safety meeting what to do in an emergency. "He said you get out and you get away. You save yourself, and that's what you're supposed to do," Adam said. "It's usually either maintenance or supervisors that want to go back in, and then they end up getting killed too." Then another explosion went off. Adam believes it's the blast that burst his eardrum. "Maybe I should have listened to him," he said. "But I'd do that again if it meant that I could get in there and help get Matt out, or anybody else." While heading to the fire, Adam called his wife. His mother. His father, who was on a fishing trip in Alabama. He kept the calls short. "I told him a plane just crashed, and I think everybody's dead, but I gotta go. And I hung up on him," Adam said. He wanted to reassure his family, but knew there could be people who needed his help. Seconds later, he heard one of those pleas. "I heard somebody say, 'Help,'" Adam said. "I turned and looked, and that was Matthew. He was standing there, and all his clothes were burnt off. He was burnt from his feet to his head. It was a horrible thing to see. It didn't even look real." Matthew Sweets was a customer. "I said- we got to get up front. So as he took a step to walk, he could barely move, so I said, come on, get on my back. So I put him on my back and started carrying him," Adam remembered. It was hundreds of yards to the front of the property. Adam knew he couldn't carry Matthew that far. "I'd say I probably carried him about 30, 40 yards maybe, and then I sat him down and I said I'm going to go get a car," Adam said. "He just kept saying that it hurt and he needed water." Adam found a coworker with a flatbed truck. They laid Matthew down on it, and Adam stood on the back, shouting at traffic to get out of the way. They reached an officer. "I said we need an ambulance. This guy needs help, and as he looked over at Matthew, his eyes just got really big, and his jaw dropped, and he just kind of froze," Adam said. There were no ambulances on site yet. They drove toward the fire trucks and parked in a lot, and Adam did the only thing he could think of. "I asked him his name several times because I remembered my wife telling me, in traumatic situations like that, you just got to keep talking to somebody and make sure they're conscious and that they understand what's going on." When the ambulance finally came, he turned to his coworker. "I said, I think we just lost a lot of guys." Matthew Sweets did not survive. He was a father, with young children and a partner. At the hospital, Adam met Matthew's parents for the first time. He remembers Matthew's dad, Michael, giving him a bear hug. "His mom said that they didn't expect him to make it, and that was probably one of the toughest things, is hearing a mom say that," Adam said. "But she was really grateful to get to see him and say goodbye." I have spoken with Matthew's parents. They speak so highly of Adam. When I told him that, he wouldn't accept the praise. "I just did what I hope somebody would do in the situation reversed," Adam said. "If I'm in trouble, my family's in trouble, I want somebody to, if they can get somebody some help, then get them help. That's how I've always felt and always will." ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8c/19/8c19890d-f21a-4442-8055-5db9783cac58/content/images/2026/10/Jamel-Beard.JPG) Jamel Beard While Adam was carrying Matthew, Manuel Leos was trying to find out who was alive. "Within five minutes, I was able to know who was missing and how many people I had missing. At this point, I knew Megan was missing, Trina was missing, John Boy was missing. Alain, I knew he got out, and somebody rushed him to the hospital, but those three I knew they were missing," Manuel remembered. Out on the road, Jamel found Ashley. "I'm yelling to Ashley, where's the girls? Pertaining to Trina and Megan," Jamel said. "And she said she just kneeled down and shook her head no." Ashley told me she knew what she was handing him. "I've worked with Jamel for a really long time, and nothing in me wanted to be the person to tell him that he had lost the mother of his child that night," she said. "But I knew that I couldn't lie. They didn't get out." Jamel said he knew, too. "That whole building was just gone, and where she would normally work wasn't there." Ashley remembers what came next. "I just remember him screaming, no, no, and then he yelled. I just kept sitting there in the middle of the road, shaking. My hands were pretty cut up, and the front of my shirt was covered in blood, I was there, but I wasn't there," she said. Her phone, which she did not remember holding, began to ring. She answered calls from her kids to tell them she was alive. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8c/19/8c19890d-f21a-4442-8055-5db9783cac58/content/images/2026/10/Screenshot-2026-10-19-at-1.43.31---PM.png) Trina Chavez It is easy, in a story like this one, to lose individual people inside the number. So I asked each survivor the same question: Tell me about them. "Trina was a very devoted mother," Ashley said. "Her whole world was her kids. She was constantly on the phone with them throughout the day. Her daughter would call, I don't know, four or five times a day before she would get off. Her son was definitely a mama's boy. He loved his mom." Jamel and Trina had once been together and were no longer, but they raised children together. Her son was two months old when Jamel met her. "She was a kind-hearted person, lovable, funny, outgoing. She had her rough sides, but for the most part, she was a happy person," Jamel said. Her birthday is coming up. "The yearly coming up is hard," he said. "It'll be the second year without their mother." ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8c/19/8c19890d-f21a-4442-8055-5db9783cac58/content/images/2026/10/Screenshot-2026-10-19-at-1.45.07---PM.png) Megan Washburn "Megan was the stern one, I think. Someone asked me the other day if I would consider myself like the mama bear of the office, and I'd say that was probably Megan," Ashley said. "She was extremely intelligent, and if she didn't know the answer, she would figure it out before the day was over." She was the one who found the second truck. She was the one who stayed late. She was the one who pushed Ashley out of the window. Adam knew her from working inventory. "She was a mother trying to take care of her kids, just like Trina was," he said. "And now, this has happened, and taking that from them. That's something I can't imagine, as being a kid, losing my mother." ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8c/19/8c19890d-f21a-4442-8055-5db9783cac58/content/images/2026/10/john-loucks.webp) John 'Boy' Loucks John Boy Loucks was the company's crane operator. "I've known him for as long as I can remember. When I was younger, I used to go with my dad when they would play basketball together, and I was too little to play," Adam said. "He's been a part of our family pretty much ever since I can remember." For Manuel, the friendship went back even further. "I knew John Boy since like 1997\. We worked in another facility when we were like 18 years old," he said. "We spent a lifetime together. A really good friend of mine." ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8c/19/8c19890d-f21a-4442-8055-5db9783cac58/content/images/2026/10/Screenshot-2026-10-19-at-12.52.32---PM.png) Alain Rodriguez Alain Rodriguez was Cuban. Manuel hired him. He was working the scale that afternoon, alone, pushing the last of the line through. He was badly burned and taken to the hospital. Adam went to see him many times. He didn't know what to say to a man who couldn't answer, so he did the one thing he could think of. "Alain's Cuban, and that story's about a Cuban fisherman. A guy on his own and going through some struggles and trying to make it by himself," Adam said. "I just thought that was kind of fitting for Alain, and that he might enjoy listening to it. So I played that for him." It was *The Old Man and the Sea.* On his last visit, around Christmas, Alain seemed to be getting better. They had him sedated. Adam let himself hope. "That's the first time I really thought that he might actually pull through this," Adam said. "I couldn't wait for him to wake up and just get to talk to him again." The team found out he didn't make it on Christmas night. Adam wants people to understand what Alain did the afternoon of the crash. He worked as fast as he could to get as many people through the line as possible. The line was shorter because of Alain's efforts. "He actually saved a whole lot of lives that day, and people don't realize that because they just don't know," Adam said. The people who died at Grade A weren't only employees. Many were customers, men and women who came to sell scrap, often every day. "We seen them more than maybe their own family has, because they're out trying to make sure they're providing for who it is that they need to provide for," Jamel explained. Manuel has little patience for people who look down on them. "Some people, a lot of people, don't have respect for scrappers," he said. "They are hard workers. They are good people. They're trying to feed their family." **John Spray-** "John Spray would always ask about my son," Ashley said. "He used to live in the same trailer park as my youngest, so every day he would come in and ask me how he's doing, and if we needed anything." Manuel remembers him as a man trying to change. "He was a great guy that made better choices," Manuel said. "He always came to me, 'If I wasn't like this, would you hire me?' Of course. I said you're a really likable guy." **Ella Whorton-** She would arrive and just stay. "She will start picking up things and cleaning things, and three or four hours go by. She's still there," Manuel said. "I said, 'Are you okay?' 'No, not really. But I like to be here.'" **Lou Fedon-** He would finish his day and sit down to talk with the women in the office. "He'll sit there and just talk with the girls. With Trina, with Megan, Ashley. We had that family-oriented feeling in our office," Jamel said. And Manuel: "He would talk to me for maybe 10 minutes, until customers behind him start getting mad." Ashley's voice changed when I asked what she wanted the community to know about the customers they lost. "Our customers are the reason we came to work every day. They are the reason we stayed late. They are the reason that we did all of the things that we did," she said. "They deserved to live too. Their lives and their purpose weren't done yet," she said. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8c/19/8c19890d-f21a-4442-8055-5db9783cac58/content/images/2026/10/second-best-group.JPG) The four survivors at the satellite location 'Amen' ## "We're okay, but we're not okay" Today, the Grade A team works out of a second location. The yard they built from nothing over 21 years is gone. "Our business is gone," Manuel said. "I have been with the company for 21 years. We start hiring people. We start buying equipment. We start buying property. In 21 years of very hard work, now it's gone into dust, into ashes." Adam said the move out of Grade A was hard on everyone. "Manuel's been really good with talking to all of us, and knowing that look, this is all we've got right now. We've got to make it work, and we've just got to make this our home like we did at Grade A," he said. "Because again, I was there for 15 years, and it grew a lot since I started there. I feel like I was a big part of it." Before the crash, Grade A saw between 200 and 300 customers a day, Adam said. They have rarely hit that since. Some customers went to a competitor near the old location, which is about 10 miles away. "To somebody that doesn't have hardly any gas or is riding a bike or something, that's a long way to go," Adam said. "We know we've lost some." I asked whether, without the second location, the business would simply be gone. "Yes," Adam said. "My career would be completely gone, and everything that I've put in for 15 years would have just been gone in that instant. And I'd be figuring out what to do, and I don't know what I would be doing." The toll is on their bodies too. Adam wears a hearing aid. "I have high-pitched hearing loss and I've got tinnitus, which is just the constant ringing. When I take it off at night to sleep, I hear it again, so it makes sleep difficult," he said. He pays out of pocket for care he says he shouldn't have to. His workers' compensation claim initially covered the wrong doctor. The hearing aid, about $2,000, was denied. He has been waiting about three months for an independent medical evaluation. He also sees a therapist and a physical therapist. He describes frustration at how slowly things move. "I'm feeling like the time's being weaponized, and things could be getting done quicker, because everybody's wanting to move forward and do the best we can," he said. "I don't know that we can put pieces back together, but at least get what pieces we have together." Ashley told me the year has changed her. "It's not the same. It'll never be the same," she said. "I think I lost a part of me that day, and I don't know that I'll ever get her back. That piece is just gone, and I can't quite put my finger on it. It's just different." Manuel Leos asked me to include two questions in this story. They are his questions, and his opinions. "My first question would be: Was it worth it for UPS to make the decision? Either individually or as a group, but they made it." Manuel said. "Second question is, what right do they have to play with people's lives like this? Somebody needs to take accountability. Somebody needs to be responsible and do the right thing." He said he is angry, and sad. He told me he hopes the courts will act. "I hope the law brings justice to all of us, because somebody needs to be held accountable. I know if I would have done that to UPS, I would be in jail or nailed to a cross." The [NTSB investigation is ongoing](https://www.shayinformed.com/thursdays-nick-houck-hearing-could-decide-whether-theres-a-trial-at-all/). The final report is not expected until next year. ## The public remembrance On November 4th, around 5:14 p.m. churches, places of worship, and other institutions across the city are encouraged to ring bells for one minute in recognition of the lives lost. The minute following will be a minute of silence. Louisville Metro Hall, the Big Four Bridge, and the spires at Churchill Downs will be lit yellow for the evening. The community is invited to wear yellow or light their building yellow, as well. Grade A will close at noon on Nov. 4, 2026, so employees can attend a private memorial at the site. Adam has been texting with Matthew's father. He told me it isn't easy. "I went to his funeral and talked to his family there," he said. "I just don't know what to say to a man that lost a son. I couldn't imagine losing my son or daughter and having to go through that." Maybe there is nothing to say. Maybe it is enough to show up. The victims of the UPS Plane Crash: **UPS Employees** ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8c/19/8c19890d-f21a-4442-8055-5db9783cac58/content/images/2026/10/Screenshot-2026-10-19-at-3.02.29---PM.png) **Grade A Employees:** ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8c/19/8c19890d-f21a-4442-8055-5db9783cac58/content/images/2026/10/Screenshot-2026-10-19-at-2.58.04---PM.png) **Grade A Customers:** ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/8c/19/8c19890d-f21a-4442-8055-5db9783cac58/content/images/2026/10/Customers-killed-1.png) *I am an independent journalist, fully funded by subscribers. You can* [*support important work like this for $4.99/month*](https://www.shayinformed.com/a-year-later-the-ups-crash-lawsuits-are-still-waiting-to-begin/#/portal/signup) *and gain access to my in-depth reporting, investigations, podcasts, and weekly newsletter.*