Two people were killed in a fiery plane crash in Palmer Lake Wednesday morning.
It will take several days to identify the crash victims, the El Paso County Coroner’s Office said Wednesday.
Authorities are investigating the single-engine plane’s crash into a field in the northern El Paso County community, Allen Kenitzer said local authorities told him. Kenitzer is the public information officer for the Northwestern Mountain Region of the Federal Aviation Administration.
The plane’s make, model and registration is unknown, but it has been identified as a red biplane, according to Eric Weiss, spokesman for the National Transportation Safety Board.
NTSB is the lead investigating agency, with the help of FAA, and will be working to fill in the gaps surrounding the crash, like where the plane was coming from or heading to, who was inside and what caused the plane to crash, Weiss said. The agency currently could not answer those questions, he said.
“We’ll use GPS, iPhones, anything to paint an electronic portrait of the last moments of the flight,” Weiss said, confirming two fatalities.
The El Paso County Sheriff’s Office also has been involved in investigating the crash, but has not released any information, save for a single tweet acknowledging the crash.
The crash happened around 8 a.m., according to Weiss.
Pictures of the crash circulating on social media showed it occurred in a field near a residential community. It also sparked a small grass fire, which some media have reported has been extinguished. A Palmer Lake Fire Department captain said he could not release any information about the crash, including if the grass fire was out.
