Clues sought in fatal crash
National Transportation Safety Board and FBI investigators inspect a hangar Monday at an airport in Addison, near Dallas, the day after a small plane crashed there, killing all 10 people on board.
ADDISON — Four members of a Texas family with ties to a major ranching operation and other business interests were among the 10 people who died Sunday when a private plane crashed into an airport hangar shortly after takeoff.
Brian and Ornella Ellard, and Ornella Ellard’s teenage children, Alice and Dylan Maritato, were killed when the plane, which appears to have been owned by Ellard’s family, crashed at a small airport in Addison, just north of Dallas.
Two crew members and four other passengers also were killed. The passengers included Stephen Thelen, the managing director of a Dallas commercial real estate company, and his wife, Gina, according to a statement from Thelen’s firm.
On Monday evening, the Dallas County medical examiner’s office said it had identified one of the pilots as Matthew Palmer, 28.
The names of the remaining three victims — one pilot and two passengers — had not been released by late Monday.
More than a dozen inspectors from the National Transportation Safety Board were investigating the crash Monday. At a late-afternoon briefing, officials from the safety board said that investigators had recovered the plane’s cockpit voice recorder and were hoping it could provide details of what transpired in the moments before the plane went down.
Investigators hope to have preliminary findings in about two weeks, but full results of the inquiry aren’t expected for about 18 months, according to Bruce Landsberg, the board’s vice chairman.
The plane was bound for St. Petersburg, Fla., from Addison, a 4.4-square-mile community that is heavily dependent on its small municipal airport, which caters to business travelers.
Clay Jenkins, the Dallas County judge and director of homeland security and emergency management, said Monday that the county medical examiner was still seeking to confirm the identities of the 10 victims.
The hangar that the plane struck, which is privately owned, had a jet and a helicopter inside at the time, officials said. Both aircraft were damaged.
“The plane banked hard to the left, went into the hangar, and then within minutes — two to three minutes — there were huge flames,” Jenkins said. “The fire department is literally the closest building to that hangar, so they were able to quickly get there, but there was obviously nothing that could be done to save people.”