This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
A medical plane that crashed, killing four people last month in Elko, Nev., appeared to have lost power shortly after takeoff, a preliminary report from the National Transportation Safety Board implies.
One crew member, Jake Shepherd, worked part time in an ambulance service in Tooele County, and the plane was bound for Salt Lake City's University of Utah Medical Center. He, two other crew members and a patient were killed in the fiery crash.
A witness at Elko Regional Airport told investigators that he saw the airplane "make a left turn about 30 degrees from the runway heading" during its initial climb. Then, he said, the plane "stopped climbing and made an abrupt left bank and descended" out of his line of sight.
The sun had set when the plane took off, the report states, and while an FAA instrument flight plan detailing the journey to Salt Lake City was filed, it had not been activated on the aircraft.
The twin-engine plane crashed in a mining company's parking lot near a casino and other businesses about half a mile away from the end of the runway and "immediately burst into flames," the report says. Then, several secondary explosions occurred "as a result of fire damage to medical compressed-gas bottles and several vehicles that were consumed by the post-impact fire."
All major structural components of the plane were found in the wreckage, but it had sustained "extensive thermal damage."
Detailed examinations of the wreckage are pending, the report said.
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