2 dead following single-engine plane crash
Two people died after a single-engine Glastar plane crashed into a residential area in the village of Waukesha on Tuesday morning.
The Waukesha County Sheriff’s Office confirmed the deaths late Tuesday afternoon, corroborating information previously reported by the Federal Aviation Administration and other sources shortly after the crash about 9:35 a.m.
According to the latest information, the sheriff ’s office was notified by the Waukesha County Communications Center at 9:41 a.m. that Milwaukee Approach Control Tower had lost both radio and radar communication with the airplane minutes earlier.
Shortly thereafter, the communications center received phone calls from residents in both the villages of Vernon and Waukesha who had heard a loud noise and spotted possible debris in a rural residential area between the more heavily populated areas of the City of Waukesha and the Village of Big Ben.
According to the sheriff ’s office, deputies “saturated the area,” eventually locating the airplane in a wooded area south of Redwing Drive in the Village of Waukesha. Both occupants aboard the aircraft died at the scene. No one else was injured.
According to the FAA, the plane took off from Lawrence J. Timmerman Airport in Milwaukee. It was headed to Salina Regional Airport in Salina, Kansas.
The National Transportation Safety Board and the FAA will investigate the crash, neither of which confirmed the deaths as media representatives scrambled to uncover exactly what had occurred.
“The FAA will release the tail number of the aircraft after investigators verify it at the accident site,” the FAA said in a statement earlier Tuesday.
Nearby residents were informed of the crash by the Waukesha Fire Department, said Brad Valerine, who lives at Maple Hill Court and Chestnut Trail.
An employee at Green Man Tree Service, W240 S6103 Highway 164, whose business is near to the crash site, reportedly heard what was likely a plane struggling shortly before it crashed, said Julia Gustin, the company’s office manager.
“I did have one employee who was working in the back area only a few hundred feet from where the plane went down,” Gustin said. “He did hear what sounded like an engine fail and then a boom. At first he didn’t think much of it, because we have a tremendous amount of major construction happening just to our south, and we hear booms and bangs all the time.”
As the investigation began, the business allowed at least a half dozen law enforcement vehicles park on its property, but Gustin said she had heard nothing more, other than a plane crash had occurred and its occupants were killed.
Dispatch audio indicates the plane “stopped communication” at 9:34 a.m., as the altitude of the plane descended about 1,100 feet. The plane was 6.1 miles south of the Waukesha County Airport at that time.
Audio from the Milwaukee Air Traffic Control Center indicates the last words to the pilot from an air traffic controller were “radio contact is lost.”
At the time contact was lost with the plane, the Waukesha County Airport was reporting an overcast sky with fog and mist in the area. Winds were out of the west at 8 to 10 mph and visibility ranged from 2.5 to 5 miles, according to the National Weather Service.
The Waukesha County Medical Examiner’s Office declined to confirm whether anyone had been sent to the crash site.