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Silicon Valley couple identified as victims in Wayne County plane crash

(Photo courtesy of Wayne County Sheriff's Office) Two people were killed in a plane crash in southern Utah on Friday, May 24, 2019.

A California couple has been identified as the victims who were killed in a small-plane crash last week in southern Utah.

Christian C. Simonsen was the pilot of the Cirrus SR22 small plane that crashed sometime before 11:20 a.m. Friday, May 24. His wife, Lynn Ann Anderson-Simonsen, was the passenger. Both are from Morgan Hill, Calif., a residential community at the southern tip of Silicon Valley.

After calls from witnesses who heard an explosion, crews from the Wayne County Sheriff’s Office found the single-engine aircraft in a remote stretch along Miner’s Mountain Road.

According to a release from the sheriff’s office, the plane had been hovering over the desert above Grover, about 7 miles southeast of Torrey, when people on the ground said it suddenly disappeared.

Deputies who first arrived at the scene saw pieces of debris on fire.

The sheriff’s office said Thursday that Investigators from the Federal Aviation Administration, the National Transportation Safety Board and the plane’s manufacturer were at the site Saturday, May 25, to figure out how the crash occurred.

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