Plane crash in US! State Senator, his wife and their two children killed – Details here
A plane crash in US’ Utah on Sunday killed state senator from North Dakota, Doug Larsen, his wife and their two young children, as confirmed by a Senate leader on Monday, The Associated Press reported.
The family’s death was confirmed by Republican Senate Majority Leader David Hogue sent to his fellow senators.
Crash details
The single-engine Piper plane took off from Canyonlands Airfield on Sunday and crashed soon after, killing all four people on board. The Senator was the pilot of the plane. “Senator Doug Larsen, his wife Amy, and their two young children died in a plane crash last evening in Utah,” Hogue wrote in his email. “They were visiting family in Scottsdale and returning home. They stopped to refuel in Utah,” Grand County Sheriff’s Department said in a Facebook post.
The National Transportation Safety Board said on X, formerly Twitter, that the plane crash was under investigation. As per an NTSB spokesperson, an investigator was to arrive at the scene on Monday to “begin to document the scene, examine the aircraft, request any air traffic communications, radar data, weather reports and try to contact any witnesses”. The investigator will also request maintenance records of the aircraft, along with the medical records and pilot’s flight history.
The agency will have a preliminary report on the crash within a couple weeks, followed by a final report in a year to year and a half, NTSB spokesman Fabian Salazar said. The officials have not released the plane’s origin or final destination.
State Senator Doug Larsen
Larsen served 29 years in the North Dakota Army National Guard. He mobilized twice, to Iraq from 2009-10 and to Washington, D.C., from 2013-14, as per Gov. Doug Burgum’s office. In a statement, Burgum said that Larsen was “a father, husband, coach, entrepreneur, businessman, state senator and lieutenant colonel in the North Dakota National Guard who committed himself fully to each of those roles with an unwavering sense of honor and duty”.
Republican state Senator Scott Meyer, who sat behind Larsen in the Senate, remembered him for his unique and dry sense of humor, candor on issues and passion for flying.
(With AP inputs)