Coroner: Leg found in Lake Erie is Dublin-area victim’s

A leg found by a Lake Erie fisherman offshore near Erie, Pennsylvania, belongs to one of the Dublin area victims of the December 2016 plane crash in Cleveland, a coroner said Friday.

Erie County Coroner Lyell Cook refused to release the name of the person whose leg was found at the request of the victims’ families.

DNA testing showed the leg belonged to one of six people from the Dublin area killed Dec. 29 moments after the private Cessna Citation 525 jet which crashed moments after departure from Burke Lakefront Airport in Cleveland, Cook said. The victims lived in a neighborhood north of Dublin in Delaware County.

A fisherman found the leg July 22 while fishing in Lake Erie near the Elk Creek Access off Lake City, in northwestern Pennsylvania, some 80 miles away from the plane crash site.

Remains of only three of the crash victims have previously been reported recovered: the pilot, John Fleming, 45; his 15-year-old son Jack; and a family friend, Brian Casey, 50.

The bodies of Fleming’s wife Sue, their 14-year-old son Andrew and Casey’s 19-year-old daughter Megan, were not found after authorities searched the lake for three weeks.

Part of Jack Fleming’s body washed up on the shores of Lake Erie on June 21 in Willowick, in northeastern Ohio.

John Fleming, the CEO of Columbus-based Superior Beverage Company, was flying the group back to Columbus after they attended a Cavaliers game to celebrate his birthday.

Fleming was certified to fly the Cessna Citation 525 just 21 days before the crash, according to the National Transportation Safety Board’s preliminary report. He took off from the airport about 11 p.m. and lost altitude quickly before crashing into the lake.

The NTSB has not yet finalized its investigation into what caused the crash.