A SMALL PLANE that took off from this airstrip at Basin Harbor in Ferrisburgh on Sunday afternoon crashed, killing all four people on board.
Photo from the Vt. Agency of Transportation

This story has been updated since it was originally published here on Sept. 9.

FERRISBURGH — An airplane crash in Ferrisburgh Sunday afternoon claimed the lives of four people who had flown up from Connecticut for brunch at the Basin Harbor resort. There were no reports of injuries to anyone on the ground.

Although the crash happened in the early afternoon, Vermont authorities weren’t alerted to the fact that the plane was missing until 10:20 p.m. Sunday night, and police found the wreckage with everyone in it deceased about two hours later.

Police on Monday afternoon identified the victims as Paul Pelletier, 55, of the Connecticut town of Columbia; Frank Rodriguez, 88, of Lebanon; and Susan Van Ness, 51, and Delilah Van Ness, 15, both of Middletown.

Pelletier was an Aerospace and Manufacturing teacher at Middletown High School, where Delilah Van Ness was a sophomore. Susan Van Ness was Delilah’s mother. School was canceled on Tuesday as officials were in mourning.

A Lebanon, Conn., official told a Connecticut newspaper that Rodriguez was “like a senior stateman,” calling him a gentleman and all-around nice guy.

A preliminary investigation by the Vermont State Police determined that the four-seat, single-engine Piper aircraft had departed Windham Airport in Connecticut at about 8:30 a.m. Sunday, Sept. 8, for a flight of about two hours to Basin Harbor Airport in Ferrisburgh. Investigators determined the privately owned plane landed and the occupants arrived for a brunch reservation at Basin Harbor. The party departed the restaurant shortly after noon and were to fly back to Connecticut. A witness reported seeing the airplane on the runway at about 12:15 p.m.

No reports were received indicating the aircraft was in distress or that a plane had crashed. However, after the plane failed to return to Connecticut as expected, relatives of the occupants reported the situation to the Connecticut State Police and the Middletown (Conn.) Police Department. Those agencies worked with the Federal Aviation Administration and used cellphone location data to determine that the plane’s last known location was near the airstrip in Vermont.

Middletown police notified Vermont State Police of the situation at about 10:20 p.m. Sunday. Troopers from the New Haven barracks responded along with Middlebury police, Addison County Sheriff’s Department and the Vergennes Fire Department. With the assistance of a drone flown by Middlebury police, investigators located the wreckage of the aircraft at about 12:20 a.m. Monday in a wooded area to the east of the Basin Harbor Airport. First responders confirmed all four occupants were deceased.

Vergennes Fire Chief Dave DiBiase said that at about 12:25 a.m. state police called the Vergennes Fire Department’s Heavy Rescue Team to the scene “in a wooded section between the two (air) fields.”

He described the crash site as in a heavily wooded area about 120 yards east of the takeoff strip. The city’s Heavy Rescue Team deployed at a spot about four-fifths along the roughly half-mile-long runway to reach the downed aircraft, DiBiase said, describing the site as “pretty close to the south end.”

The Heavy Rescue Team, which included 19 city firefighters and was on the scene for just over four hours, had two missions, DiBiase said: clearing a path to the site through dense underbrush with “chainsaws and manpower,” which alone took about 45 minutes, and helping to extricate the bodies from the wreckage.

DiBiase said he did not learn anything about the nature or cause of the crash, including, for instance, whether the plane went straight into the woods from the runway or was trying to return to Basin Harbor.

“I did not hear anything on that front. It sounded like the FAA was coming in with their investigative folks,” he said.

He described a difficult scene for first responders, both physically and emotionally.

“It was pretty traumatic. We’re going to our own critical incident stress debriefing with our team because of the nature of it. And we’re going to do that this week,” he told the Independent. “Something I’d like to stress is responder mental health. It’s important to do so, and this is one of those times that we’re going to make sure we’re going to bring in those professionals to assist.”

The bodies of the victims were taken to the Chief Medical Examiner’s Office in Burlington for autopsies to determine the cause and manner of death.

The FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board are the lead investigative agencies on the airplane crash. VSP’s Bureau of Criminal Investigations is responsible for the death investigation.

This investigation is active and ongoing.