A young man was killed Monday evening when his small plane crashed in the countryside north of Lakeland, in Polk County, Florida. Sheriff Grady Judd said the call came in at about six minutes before eight in the evening, when the sheriff's communications center received a 911 report of a plane crash. The sheriff described it as a tragic evening for the young man, his family and his friends.
According to the sheriff, the man had set out to fly together with a friend, each of them at the controls of a separate aircraft. One of the planes had taken off from Lakeland and the other from Bartow, and the two pilots had arranged to meet up over the countryside north of Lakeland to fly in formation. Judd said that was exactly what they were doing when the crash happened.
The account of how the crash unfolded came from the other pilot, who witnessed it. He told authorities that he saw the plane come apart, or a piece come off the aircraft, after which it immediately dropped straight down between the pine trees. The sheriff stressed that the information he was relaying had been provided by that surviving pilot.
As soon as the emergency call was received, Polk Fire Rescue and the sheriff's office responded to the rural scene. Crews made their way out to the wooded area where the plane had gone down, in a stretch of open country that the sheriff described as beautiful, on what had been a clear afternoon for flying.
Despite the apparent accidental nature of the crash, the sheriff's office said its crime scene investigators were on the scene and its homicide team was handling the preliminary investigation. Such a response is standard when a death occurs, allowing detectives to document the site carefully and establish what happened before any conclusions are drawn about the cause.
Judd offered few further details, saying only that the two friends had planned to meet in the air over the countryside to fly formations, and that the outing had ended in horrible tragedy. He called it a very sad event, underscoring that what began as a routine afternoon of recreational flying turned into a fatal accident in a matter of moments.