(Sanborn)– Two witnesses reported hearing a plane’s engine “coughing, sputtering and missing” before it crashed near Sanborn last month, killing three Wisconsin men.
That’s according to a preliminary report from the National Transportation Safety Board, which says the witnesses saw the plane at a low altitude. They also reported that the engine quit, restarted and quit again.
The three men died June 23 when the single-engine piper crashed during a flight from Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin to a hunting trip in South Dakota.
The plane touched down in a cornfield, traveled about 100 feet and hit a ditch near a gravel road before nosing over.
The men killed were 64-year-old Francis Allegretti of Cambridge, Wisconsin; 60-year-old Thomas Boos of Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin and 65-year-old Malcolm McMillan of Milton, Wisconsin.
(Story from the Associated Press).
