Victoria Plane Crash Video – A National Transportation Safety Board agent and a relative of one of the casualties have recognized the three individuals killed in the searing accident of a little plane in southeastern Minnesota as a specialist from Omaha, Nebraska, and two of his relatives from Wyoming.
Jo Mertes, of Mantador, North Dakota, told the Star Tribune Sunday that her nephew, 42-year-old Jacob Mertes and his 37-year-old spouse, Sara Mertes, of Libby, Montana, kicked the bucket alongside her nephew’s 72-year-old stepfather, Dr. James Edney, who was steering the plane. There were no survivors, authorities said.
The Federal Aviation Administration said the plane was flying from Alexandria Municipal Airport to Eden Prairie’s Flying Cloud Airport before 6 p.m. Saturday when it went down and burst into flares in Victoria, a city of around 7,300 around 25 miles (40 kilometers) southwest of Minneapolis.
Trash from the Mooney M20M arrived in close by yards and struck no less than one house, lighting a fire that spectators immediately quenched. Nobody in the home or on the ground was harmed, authorities said.
The plane is claimed by Edney, an Omaha general specialist and teacher of medical procedure at University of Nebraska Medical Center. Sara Mertes’ Facebook page shows that she was a doctor at Cabinet Peaks Medical Center in Libby, while Jacob Mertes filled in as a sanitarian and organizer for the Lincoln County Health Department in Montana, the paper revealed.
The Carver County Sheriff’s Office said additional data on the accident will come from the National Transportation Safety Board, which is driving the examination.
Amy Jensen, who lives two squares south of the accident site, said she heard a “crash” as the plane went over her home, then, at that point all fell calm, so she realized something wasn’t right. Outside, she saw three bits of the plane dispersed more than a few yards.
