Two people were killed in a plane crash after taking off from a Wendover airport Tuesday afternoon.
Danny Summers, 55, of Sugar City, Idaho, and Jodi Wyatt 47, of Rexburg, Idaho, were killed when the vintage aircraft they were flying crashed in Idaho’s Sawtooth mountains, the Twin Falls County Sheriff’s Office said.
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The plane’s debris was spotted by an Idaho Civil Air Patrol pilot about 11:10 a.m. Wednesday along Deadline Ridge in the Sawtooth National Forest, roughly 60 miles south of Twin Falls, Idaho.
Crews reached the wreckage and confirmed the deaths about 4 p.m., said CAP spokesman Stephen Miller. It took crews about two hours to traverse the rugged, snowpacked terrain to reach the site.
According to the Elko County Sheriff’s Office, the plane had taken off about 4 p.m. Tuesday from a Wendover airstrip. At 7:30 p.m., Salt Lake City International Airport, which had been tracking the flight, notified the Sheriff’s Office that the plane had suddenly disappeared from its radar.
Elko County Sheriff’s Detective Cpl. James Carpenter said that the 1952 Korean War-era single-engine plane — a Douglas AD4 Skyraider — originally was thought to have gone down in the Jackpot, Nev., area, but a search of the region Tuesday night, plagued by poor visibility and winter weather, turned up nothing.
Miller said the search widened Wednesday morning with two CAP aircraft — one from Utah and the other from Idaho — taking to the air. It was the Idaho pilot who reported seeing the wreckage.
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