3 killed in crash of plane outside Rio Rico

Sunday, 9 June 2002
http://www.azstarnet.com/star/today/20609PLANECRASH.html
By L. Anne Newell
ARIZONA DAILY STAR

An Arizona man and two other people were killed when the small plane they were flying in crashed near Rio Rico on Saturday afternoon, authorities said.

The plane, which carried Sean Reidy of Scottsdale, Michael Kelly of Honolulu and Kristen Alass of Colorado Springs, Colo., took off from Chandler late Saturday morning. It landed at Nogales International Airport in Nogales, Ariz., to gas up, said Santa Cruz County Sheriff's Lt. Gerardo Castillo.

It took off shortly before 2 p.m., Castillo said, and went down just minutes afterward, crashing nose-first into a dirt cul-de-sac about 100 feet from a home and bursting into flames.

The three people aboard were dead when authorities arrived, Castillo said. One man and the woman were ejected, while the second man remained inside the plane, strapped to his seat as the Piper Apache burned.

Castillo said the cause of the crash was under investigation and officials from the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board were scheduled to arrive today. He said his department would guard the site overnight.

"According to the information we have, it took a nose dive," Castillo said. "It didn't travel too much after impact. Where it took the dive is where it landed."

The plane landed on Lisboa Court, a dirt street off the Ruby Road exit from Interstate 19, about five miles from the interstate, Castillo said.

Larry Tiffin, manager for the Nogales airport, said the plane was returning to the Phoenix area. The pilot of another plane saw the crash scene and radioed his office, Tiffin said.

"I'm shocked," he said. "This is very tragic."

He said the plane was a four-passenger, twin-engine aircraft.

The crash wasn't the first in the area.

Two men and two women from the Phoenix area died in a private plane crash near Nogales in April 1994. The single-engine plane went down about 100 yards from Arizona 82 after circling the airport several times. It skidded and wound up about 15 yards from the road.

* Contact reporter L. Anne Newell at 629-9412 or at lnewell@azstarnet.com.

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