Additional victims of Dallas-area plane crash identified
Posted July 2, 2019 11:03 am.
DALLAS — Two more of the 10 people who died when a small plane crashed into a hangar at a suburban Dallas airport have been publicly identified.
Jinky Hicks, the presiding director of Tennis Competitors of Dallas, said in an email Monday that a league director, Mary Titus, and her husband, John, were among the eight passengers killed in the fiery Sunday morning crash.
Two crew members were also killed when the Beechcraft BE-350 King Air crashed into a hangar after taking off from Addison Municipal Airport.
Hicks said five other members of the tennis organization were also on the plane, which was headed to St. Petersburg, Florida. Witnesses and authorities say the aircraft struggled to gain altitude before veering into the hangar, which isn’t far from a busy commercial strip and densely populated residential neighbourhoods.
Eight of the 10 people who were killed have been identified. Dallas County officials have confirmed 52-year-old Brian Mark Ellard, 58-year-old Stephen Lee Thelen, 28-year-old Matthew Palmer, 15-year-old Alice Maritato and 13-year-old Dylan Maritato were among the dead.
The Catholic Diocese of Dallas said that Ornella Ellard was also killed. She was married to Brian Ellard and was the mother of Alice and Dylan Maritato.
Federal investigators said Monday that they’ve started analyzing the cockpit voice recorder. The private plane was not required to have a flight data recorder, which tracks the performance of virtually every system on board. Nearly all off the plane was destroyed in the fire.
National Transportation Safety Board investigators will rely on physical evidence at the crash site, video, radar information and witness accounts to determine the cause of the crash.
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An earlier version of this story was corrected to reflect that Jinky Hicks is a woman, not a man.
The Associated Press
