Estimated read time: 1-2 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
Alex Cabrero ReportingThere are still no answers to a plane crash in Wayne County yesterday that killed two government workers.
Tal Ehlers with the Wayne County Sheriff's office said, "We don't know what caused the accident, what the results are, but we do know it's an ongoing investigation."
Ehlers is with the search and rescue team that found the wreckage of the two-seater plane just a short time after it crashed. Two men were in that plane; both died.
Pilot Joseph Harris, and his passenger, Glen Stevenson, were from Sevier County and worked with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. They were doing predator control work, looking for coyotes, when something went terribly wrong.
"With the number of cattlemen and ranchers, the number of sheep we have up here in this area, they were out doing their job," Ehlers said.
The investigation as to how this crash happened is still being conducted. The FAA was out there yesterday; the NTSB is out there now. No matter what they find out, though, this is still a very tragic story.
This spot of the crash is roughly six miles southwest of Highway 24, near Loa. Ehlers says, "It's pretty much 4-wheel drive only. There are a lot of dirt roads, but to get to where we were, it was 4-wheel drive access only. It is very sad. They were two men out working, going to work as they do every day before, and unfortunately, this kind of incident occurred."
The plane took off from the Richfield airport at 6:00 in the morning, the crash was reported at 8:30. That's two and a half hours of fly time, but it's the final few minutes investigators are trying to figure out.
