AS SURVIVORS RETURN HOME, FRIENDS AND FAMILY VEHEMENTLY DENY PERU'S ACCOUNT

Three survivors of a missionary plane shot down in Peru after being
mistaken for drug smugglers returned to the United States yesterday as
details of their ordeal in the jungle, and of their years as backwater
missionaries, were recounted by colleagues and friends.

Officials of their mission vehemently disputed Peruvian accounts of the
Friday incident, saying that the plane was easily identifiable by its
markings and that its pilot had filed a flight plan and had been in radio
contact with an airport where he intended to land. They said the Peruvian
military plane had opened fire without warning, killing the missionary's
wife and infant daughter.

A pastor in Muskegon, Mich., who had spoken by phone to the missionary,
quoted him as saying that after their stricken plane had crashed in a
river, the Peruvian fighter swooped in low and strafed the survivors -- the
missionary, his 6-year-old son and the wounded pilot -- as they clung to
the burning wreckage.

James Bowers, 37, a missionary with the Association of Baptists for World
Evangelism, and his son, Cory, arrived at the Raleigh-Durham International
Airport in North Carolina just after noon on a flight from Peru and were
met by officials of the New Cumberland, Pa., mission that had sponsored his
family's work for the last seven years.

Before going into seclusion at the home of his mother, Wilma, Mr. Bowers
expressed concern about the bodies of his wife, Veronica, 35, and their
7-month-old-daughter, Charity, who were killed in the attack. The bodies
were still awaiting clearance by authorities in Lima, and the family was
unable to make funeral plans.

In Philadelphia, the pilot of the downed aircraft, Kevin Donaldson, 42,
arrived and was met by his wife, Bobbi, and Hank Scheltema, aviation
director of the Baptist mission. Mr. Donaldson was taken to Reading General
Hospital for surgery. Although shot in both legs, Mr. Donaldson had
crash-landed his pontoon plane on the Amazon River, where the survivors
clung to its burning, flipped-over wreckage for nearly an hour until
rescued by villagers in dugout canoes.

The Peruvian Air Force, which expressed regret, said over the weekend that
the missionary plane had entered Peruvian airspace unannounced from Brazil
and was fired upon after Mr. Donaldson failed to respond to repeated radio
requests to identify himself while flying without a flight plan through a
region frequented by drug runners.

But Phil Bowers, a trained pilot who sat in on his brother's debriefing by
military officials in Peru on Saturday, disputed that version. He said that
Mr. Donaldson had been in radio contact with the airport at the jungle city
of Iquitos, where he intended to land 40 minutes later, and that the
Peruvian plane had fired without warning.

"There was no communication," Phil Bowers told The Associated Press in
Iquitos, 625 miles northeast of Lima. He said the Cessna 185 had been
dogged by two planes -- the Peruvian fighter and an American spotter that
had apparently identified Mr. Donaldson's craft as a possible smugglers'
flight.

"It happened very fast," Phil Bowers related. "The planes flew by first,
did some swooping, and then came in from behind and started shooting." Even
after the Cessna crashed into the river and flipped over, he said, the
Peruvian plane continued firing as survivors clung to the wreckage and the
pilot of the American surveillance plane looked on.

"We've got hundreds of witnesses from the shore, Peruvians who were
watching from the village of Huanta," Mr. Bowers said. And, referring to
the Peruvian pilot, he asked: "Why didn't they call and check the
registration? Sounds like a bunch of vigilante hot-shot pilots. Either that
or someone higher up ordered the pilots to shoot."

In Muskegon, Mich., the Rev. William Rudd, pastor of the Calvary Church,
from which Mr. and Mrs. Bowers had been sent on their South American
mission in 1994, said he had spoken to Mr. Bowers by phone and recounted
details of what he characterized as a murderous unprovoked attack without
warning.

He quoted Mr. Bowers as saying that the survivors, after the crash, had
been surrounded by flames and that, as they splashed water to keep from
burning, they were fired upon again by the Peruvian attacker, who swooped
in for strafing runs. He said that a single bullet that crashed through the
fuselage had apparently killed Mrs. Bowers and the baby. Cory, he said,
helped rescue the plane's pilot, who was bleeding badly from his leg wounds.

He said Mr. Bowers told him Peruvian officials had initially wanted to take
him into custody, but had been dissuaded by American officials.

The Rev. E.C. Haskell, director of mission relations for the Baptist
association, also dismissed the Peruvian government's allegation that the
plane was not identifiable, saying that a photo on the association's web
site clearly showed the Cessna's identification numbers -- and a dove
painted on its side.

David Southwell, the association's director of South American ministries,
who met Mr. Bowers in Raleigh, insisted that Mr. Donaldson had been in
radio contact with Peruvian air officials 15 minutes before the attack. And
he called the charge that no flight plan had been filed "absolutely not
true," adding, "The flight plan was filed and followed."

Mr. Donaldson, who suffered a crushed right leg and injuries of the left
calf and was transported on a stretcher, had no immediate comment. But his
brother, Gordon Donaldson, an osteopath in Morgantown, Pa., questioned why
the Peruvian pilot and American monitors of Peru's drug interdiction
efforts had not recognized the missionary plane.

"There are only four or five civilian airplanes that fly out of the city of
Iquitos," Gordon Donaldson told The Associated Press. "His airplane has
been down there for 13 years."

As American and Peruvian government officials investigated the
circumstances surrounding the deaths, and friends and relatives mourned for
the mother and daughter, other details of the attack -- and portraits of
those caught up in it -- emerged yesterday.

Mr. Haskell said that the Bowers and their two adopted children had taken
the journey that ended in tragedy because they wanted to obtain a permanent
visa for their infant daughter. To do so, they had to go to a destination
that was outside Peru, and the closest was in Colombia.

So on Thursday, the family took off with Mr. Donaldson from Iquitos, where
the Bowers lived on a houseboat built by their church, and flew 250 miles
east to Islandia, a Peruvian town just across the border from Colombia and
Brazil. Mr. Haskell said the family had taken a boat across a river to
Leticia, Colombia, where they obtained the visa.

Mr. Haskell emphasized that, while the family had crossed into Colombia,
the missionary plane had never left Peru. "They were never out of Peruvian
air space," he said, denying Peru's account that the plane had entered
Peruvian airspace from Brazil.

The next day, Friday, the family boarded Mr. Donaldson's plane for the trip
back to Iquitos and took off. But about 100 miles east of their
destination, their plane was intercepted by the Peruvian fighter and shot down.

As friends and colleagues recalled yesterday, James and Veronica Bowers for
the last seven years had been part of a mission that began in 1939 in
northern Peru, bordering Brazil and Colombia, some 800 miles east of the
Pacific.

There, traveling waterways on their houseboat and sometimes flying in small
planes provided and piloted by their mission, they brought their teachings
to remote towns and villages in a territory that, in the 1960's, had been
part of the mission of Terry and Wilma Bowers, the parents of James Bowers,
who was raised in Brazil.

Veronica Bowers, known to friends as Roni, grew up in Virginia and decided
at the age of 12 that she wanted to be a missionary. After high school, she
attended Piedmont Bible College in Winston-Salem, N.C., where she met James
Bowers. They were married in 1985.

In the late 1980's, Mr. Bowers was in the Army, and he and his wife were
stationed for three years in Germany. After his discharge in 1990, they
returned to Piedmont Bible College and graduated together in 1993. They
then moved to Muskegon, Mich., the hometown of James's mother, and soon
became the second generation of his family to become South American
missionaries from Calvary Church.

They were sent to Peru in 1994 by the Baptist association, founded in 1927,
an organization that has 1,300 missionaries in 65 countries who are
supported by 8,000 Baptist churches. According to Mrs. Bowers's
biographical sketch for the mission, the couple were unable to have
children and adopted Cory in 1994, and Charity soon after her birth last
Sept. 14.

At Calvary Church in Muskegon, which has 1,000 members and supports about
70 missions around the world, worshipers yesterday remembered the Bowers as
a family devoted to missionary work. "She wouldn't even date a guy unless
they were ready to go off and do missionary work," Kate Sagan, a friend and
fellow church member, recalled.

Donna Zandstra, Mr. Bowers's cousin, added, "They both were doing exactly
what they believed God called them to do."