Three Killed In Small Plane Crash In Palos Hills Identified
UPDATED: 10/13/2014 6:12 p.m.
PALOS HILLS (CBS) – Three people on board a small plane were killed late Sunday after their aircraft crashed soon after taking off from Midway Airport.
The crash happened around 10:40 p.m. and just missed nearby homes. Investigators said the plane was in a nose dive when it crashed and that the pilot did not signal the aircraft was in distress.
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The plane was bound for Lawrence, Kan., and it went down in a small field near a residential area at 101st Street and 86th Court in Palos Hills.
A healthcare system in Topeka on Monday identified the plane-crash victims, which included two of its physicians, neurosurgeon Tausif Rehman and pulmonologist Ali A. Kanchwala. Also killed was Kanchwala's wife, Maria Javaid, according to a news release from Stormont-Vail HealthCare.
The FAA says the plane, a 2000 twin-engine Beechcraft Baron, was registered to Arc Aviation in Lawrence.
The pilot had refueled at Midway, officials said.
According to witnesses, it sounded like the plane was having issues before it crashed.
Agni Drossos told reporters at the scene that she was in her kitchen when she heard the plane fly over her home.
The plane "sounded like it was dying," Drossos said. "I thought it was going to land in my backyard, but it [crashed] a block behind my house.
"It just came to a dead halt," she added. "No flames, no nothing."
Mike Bronzell, a locksmith from Hickory Hills, said around 10:30 p.m. he was outside Prime Time Restaurant, about two miles northeast of the crash site, when a low-flying plane roared 200-feet above him.
"The engine was just booming so loud you couldn't hear a thing," Bronzell said. The plane was heading southwest, he said.
Nobody on the ground was injured, and the National Transportation Safety Board will be investigating.
"There's only one empty lot in the whole neighborhood and that's where the plane came down," Palos Hills Deputy Police Chief James Boie told The Associated Press by telephone early Monday.
Autopsies on the victims are scheduled for Tuesday morning and the identities of the victims will not be released until then.
