Chattanooga woman killed in plane crash
CARROLLTON, Ga. — A Chattanooga woman was killed Wednesday when a plane she was in collided midair with another small plane in western Georgia.
Taylor Nicole Stone, 24, was among three people who died in the crash at a rural airport, her pastor, Christopher Sheets, confirmed Wednesday.
In a Facebook post on the Good Shepherd Lutheran Church page, Sheets said, “Please keep Doug and Cindy Stone along with their daughter Shelby in your prayers. Their oldest daughter, Taylor, was just killed in a plane crash close to Atlanta, Georgia.”
It was unclear if Stone, a pilot and flight instructor, was flying the plane at the time of the crash.
She was a graduate of Middle Tennessee State University.
The single-engine planes collided just before 11 a.m. near the end of the lone runway at West Georgia Regional Airport, said Carroll County Fire Chief Scott Blue. The airport is located in Carrollton, about 45 miles west of Atlanta.
The dead were two men and one woman, Carroll County Chief Deputy Coroner Ed Baskin said. The woman and a man were in one plane and the second man was alone in the other plane, he said.
The cause of the deadly collision was under investigation. But Blue said a witness reported the planes looked like they were attempting to land simultaneously.
“Another pilot in the air said it appeared that both of them were trying to land and one came on top of the other,” Blue told The Associated Press in a phone interview. “At this point in time we can’t really confirm that.”
The Federal Aviation Administration said both were single-engine airplanes — a Diamond Aircraft DA20C1 and a Beech F33A.
Blue said a lone pilot was killed in the Beech aircraft, which is registered in College Park, Ga., about 40 miles east of the airport. A pilot and passenger died onboard the Diamond plane, which the fire chief said was registered to a company that trains pilots in Newnan, Ga., 22 miles to the southeast.
No one survived the crash. The identities of the other victims had not been released as of Wednesday afternoon.
First responders found the wreckage of the two planes all twisted and mixed together.
“Our unit when they first came thought it was one plane,” Blue said. “They were intermixed so much it was hard to identify two planes at first.”
The Federal Aviation Administration said it was investigating the crash in conjunction with the National Transportation Safety Board, which will determine the official cause.