PHOENIX ( AP) — Crews hunted through crags and outcroppings of a mountaintop area just east of Phoenix, searching for victims of a fiery plane crash that killed all six people aboard, including the pilot and his three young children.
The family and two other adults were headed for Thanksgiving weekend in southeastern Arizona when the twin-engine plane traveling at 200 mph slammed into a sheer cliff in the mile-high Superstition Mountains an hour after sundown Wednesday, authorities said.
The aircraft exploded in flames, split apart and scattered burning debris.
“ No one could have survived that crash,” Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu said Thursday.
The body of one child was recovered and dozens of sheriff ’s search and rescue personnel worked Thursday to recover the remains of the other victims.
Babeu said he personally notified the mother late Wednesday. The woman, who is divorced from the children’s father, is also a pilot.
“This is their entire family — it’s terrible,” Babeu said. “ Our hearts go out to the mom and the (families) of all the crash victims. We have had so many people that are working this day, and we just want to support them and embrace them and try to bring closure to this tragedy.”
By coincidence, a search and rescue team was in the craggy, jutting mountains searching for three missing teenagers Wednesday evening and saw the explosion, Babeu said. The searchers found the teens, then went up the mountain to try to reach the crash site.
Ten deputies who spent the night on the mountain were relieved by 10 more early Thursday. They and dozens of volunteers began searching the crash site at first light. Video from news helicopters Thursday morning showed the wreckage strewn at the bottom of a blackened cliff.
“This is not a rescue mission, but that of recovery,” Babeu said.
The dead included pilot Shawn Perry, 39, his two sons and his daughter, Babeu said. Morgan Perry, 9, Logan Perry, 8, and Luke Perry, 6, lived with their mother in the community of Gold Canyon in Pinal County. Their father lived in Safford in southeastern Arizona and owned a small aviation business there.
He had flown to the Phoenix suburb of Mesa with another pilot who co-owned the company and a company mechanic to pick up the children for Thanksgiving. The plane was headed back to Safford.
Comments are not available on this story.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
