All five people aboard a small plane that crashed near an airport north of Denver have died, a spokesman for the National Transportation Safety Board said.
The Piper PA-46 airplane crashed near the Erie Municipal Airport about 11:50 a.m., NTSB spokesman Peter Knudson said Sunday afternoon. Shortly after the crash, three people were declared dead at the scene and two were taken to hospitals.
Erie Police Cmdr. Lee Mathis said the six-passenger plane crashed into a grassy field a few hundred yards northwest of the runway, but he did not know if it was landing or taking off.
Jan Culver told the Boulder Daily Camera that she was with a friend in a pasture near the airport when she heard the plane and saw it flying "really, really low." "We heard it sputtering," she said. "Then there was no sound. We knew it was a crash." - AP