FAA and NTSB to lead investigation into crash cause
Six people were killed Tuesday night when a Piper Mirage crashed in rural Wisconsin, the Sauk County Sheriff’s Office said. The aircraft came down at about 9:30 p.m. in Dellona, west of the Wisconsin Dells. Five adults and one child were on board, according to Wisconsin television station Channel 3000, and there were no survivors.
The crash site is about 40 miles from Madison, about 70 miles from Minneapolis, and near the Illinois state line, Lt. Steven Schram of the Sauk County Sheriff’s Office told The New York Times.
No damage to structures or injuries to people on the ground have been reported, a sheriff’s office press release said.
The Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board will lead the investigation into what caused the crash, the sheriff’s office said.
The aircraft was a fixed-wing Piper Mirage flying from Kenosha to Menomonie and was in contact with a nearby air traffic control tower at the time of the crash, the Sauk County Sheriff’s Department said in a statement.
Investigators are hoping to learn what the communications with the tower included and whether weather in the area at the time may have contributed to the crash, the sheriff’s department said.