Four killed in private plane crash after flying from Connecticut to Vermont for brunch
Four people have been identified in a private plane crash in Vermont, including a teenage girl who loved planes.
Paul Pelletier, 55, Frank Rodriguez, 88, Susan Van Ness, 51, and Delilah Van Ness, 15, all Connecticut residents, were named as victims.
The four-seater Piper plane took off from Windham Airport around 8:30 a.m. Sunday and landed in Vermont for their brunch reservation at a fancy restaurant in Basin Harbor.
But when they did not return to Connecticut later that day, their families reported them missing, leading to the plane being located Monday morning in a “wooded area east of the Basin Harbor Airport” in Ferrisburgh.
The airport is next to a 1,700-acre resort where the four had just finished breakfast. They were all pronounced dead Monday morning, Vermont State Police confirmed in a statement.
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A group of four who died in a private plane crash in Vermont on Sunday have been identified. Pilot Paul Pelletier (pictured), a 55-year-old from Columbia, Connecticut, was among the dead. It is not yet clear whether the plane in the photo was the one that crashed
Also identified were Susan Van Ness, 51, and her 15-year-old daughter Delilah, an aviation enthusiast.
“Preliminary investigation has determined that the four-seat, single-engine Piper aircraft departed Windham Airport in Connecticut at approximately 8:30 a.m. Sunday morning,” agents wrote at 8:40 a.m.
After the two-hour flight, “the private plane landed and the occupants arrived for a brunch reservation in Basin Harbor,” agents confirmed. They revealed that “the party left the restaurant shortly after noon and were scheduled to fly back to Connecticut.”
“A witness reported seeing the aircraft on the runway at approximately 12:15 p.m.,” the statement said. Earlier police statements confirmed that authorities had “received no reports of an aircraft in distress” prior to the crash.
“However, when the aircraft did not return to Connecticut as expected, family members of the occupants notified the Connecticut State Police and the Middletown (Connecticut) Police Department,” the statement said.
“These agencies worked with the Federal Aviation Administration and used cell phone location data to determine that the last known location of the aircraft was near the runway in Vermont.”
Detectives then used a drone operated by Middlebury police to locate the wreckage around 12:20 a.m. Monday, state police said.
Emergency services confirmed that all four, including mother and daughter Susan and Delilah, had died.
The bodies were then taken to the chief coroner’s office in Burlington, where autopsies are now being performed to determine the cause and severity of death.
The bodies were then taken to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Burlington, where they are now undergoing autopsies to determine the cause and manner of death. Pictured: Paul Pelletier. It remains unclear whether the plane pictured was the one that crashed
Paul Pelletier (right) is pictured flying in a plane with his wife, whom he allows to survive
Meanwhile, the FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board are investigating the crash, which remains unsolved more than a day later.
DailyMail.com has reached out to the FAA for comment.
The VSP Bureau of Criminal Investigations is the agency responsible for investigating deaths.
Social media posts show that Pelletier was an experienced pilot who often flew single-engine planes and taught aspiring young pilots how to fly drones.
On Facebook he can be seen posing and flying various planes.
On social media, Delilah was seen as an inquisitive high school student with an interest in aviation.
She said online that her interests are “robotics, aviation, cello and art.”
She was recognized by the Connecticut Science Center at age 14 for her work developing the ScreenBird, a wearable device and motion camera that work together to create images that appear to be on a touchscreen.
This allows the user to interact with the image through mouse clicks and operations while holding the device.
Susan served as director of programs at the National Diaper Bank Network in Middletown, a nonprofit organization that works to provide needy children with “an adequate supply of diapers,” according to its website.
Her mother Susan, meanwhile, worked as director of programs at the National Diaper Bank Network in Middletown, a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing needy children with “enough diapers,” according to its website.
Rodriguez was a pilot and once part of the Super Saber Society, a group of volunteers recruited to fly low-altitude missions into enemy territory. These missions were sent by ground commanders to their troops during various conflicts.
A biography on the group’s website describes him as flying an F-100 with the U.S. Air Force’s 49th Tactical Fighter Wing from Étain-Rouvres Air Base in France from 1957 to 1959, and from 1959 to 1961 at Spangdahlem Air Base in Germany.
The nickname given to him by the air force was ‘Speedy’, the biostats.
The investigation into the crash is still ongoing and is being treated as a federal investigation. It is unclear who was flying at the time of the crash.
When contacted Monday about the crash, The Basin Harbor Resort declined to comment.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.