image via 9news.com
All five people on board a Piper PA-46 Malibu died when it crashed on Sunday, shortly before noon, near the Erie Municipal Airport in Colorado, about 25 miles northwest of Denver. Peter Knudson, spokesman for the NTSB, said the airplane had taken off from Centennial Airport, south of Denver, and was attempting to land when it crashed in a field to one side of the runway. The weather was clear at the time, Knudson said. Three of the occupants were declared dead at the scene, and two were taken to local hospitals where they later died. “We heard it sputtering,” Jan Culver, a witness, told the Boulder Daily Camera. “Then there was no sound. We knew it crashed.”
Local media identified the pilot as Oliver E. Frascona, a real-estate lawyer, who owned the airplane and lived in the neighborhood adjacent to the airport where the crash occurred. The identities of the other victims have not yet been released.
