Plane crashes into Aussie mall, 5 dead
MELBOURNE: An Australian pilot and four American tourists on a golfing vacation were killed when a light plane crashed into a suburban shopping mall and burst into flames Tuesday, shortly after takeoff in the Australian city of Melbourne, officials said.
The twin-engine Beechcraft Super King Air crashed about 45 minutes before the Direct Factory Outlet mall in Essendon was due to open, Police Minister Lisa Neville said.
The US embassy in Canberra confirmed that four victims were US citizens. Texans Greg Reynolds De Haven and Russell Munsch have been identified by their families on social media as two of the victims.
The pilot was Max Quartermain, owner of the charter company Corporate and Leisure Travel. De Haven’s sister Denelle Wicht posted on Facebook that her 70-year-old brother had been killed during “a once in a lifetime trip to Australia” with friends.
Munsch was a founding partner in the Texas law firm of Munsch Hardt, which said in a statement on Tuesday that he litigated some of the most prominent bankruptcy cases in the US, including the 2001 bankruptcy proceedings for Houston-based Enron Corp., one of the largest energy companies in the world before its collapse. He would have turned 62 on Wednesday.
The law firm called Munsch “a lawyer’s lawyer” and “one of the best of all time.”
The plane had taken off from Melbourne’s second-biggest airport at Essendon for a golfing trip to King Island, 255 km to the south, officials said.