Four Connecticut residents were found dead Monday morning inside the wreckage of a small plane that crashed outside a Vermont airport.
The plane crashed Sunday in a wooded area near the Basin Harbor Airport in Ferrisburgh, Vermont, according to Vermont State Police.
Paul Pelletier, 55, of Columbia; Frank Rodriquez, 88, of Lebanon; Susan Van Ness, 51, of Middletown; and Delilah Van Ness, 15, of Middletown were all listed as killed in the crash.
Pelletier was an aerospace and manufacturing teacher at Middletown High School. Delilah Van Ness was a sophomore at the school.
Middletown High School will be closed Tuesday. Support staff is available to provide counseling services to students and staff, officials said.
"This unimaginable loss has left a void in our hearts and our community," said Dr. Alberto Vázquez Matos, superintendent of Middletown Public Schools. "Paul, Delilah, and Susan were special individuals whose absence is already being felt throughout our district and city."
Police search for wreckage after plane fails to return to CT
The plane took off from Windham Airport in Connecticut at about 8:30 a.m. Sunday for a roughly two-hour flight to the airport in Ferrisburgh, police said. The aircraft landed and the four people arrived for a brunch reservation at Basin Harbor, a resort on Lake Champlain. They left the restaurant shortly after noon to fly back to Connecticut and a witness reported seeing the plane on the runway at about 12:15 p.m., police said.
No reports were received “indicating an aircraft in distress or that a plane had crashed,” according to Vermont State Police. When the occupants did not return to Connecticut as expected, relatives contacted police.
Investigators then used cellphone data to help determine the plane’s last known location. Using a drone, the wreckage was found overnight in a wooded area to the east of the airport.
The victims' bodies were brought to the chief medical examiner’s office for autopsies to determine the cause and manner of death, police said. The crash is under investigation.
Connecticut Public’s Matt Dwyer, Patrick Skahill and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
