Six people, including a child, died when a small plane crashed in wooded Sauk County, Wisconsin, and investigators are now reviewing the aircraft's final tower communications.
A Piper PA-46 went down in a densely wooded stretch of the Town of Dellona on Tuesday night, killing all six people aboard, Fox News reported.
Authorities received multiple calls about a downed aircraft around 9:31 p.m. Crews were sent to the Park Lane area, west of Herwig Road, where the wreckage was found. Five adults and one child were on the plane. All were dead at the scene. Identities have not been released.
The aircraft was on a return flight from Kenosha to Menomonie. It was not a commercial flight. Sheriff's officials said ownership of the plane remained unclear Wednesday as the site stayed secured.
Sauk County Sheriff Chip Meister told FOX6 Milwaukee the plane had been in contact with an air traffic control tower before the crash, and that those communications are now under review.
"We know that they had contact with the tower prior to the crash and investigators are looking into that today to find out what that communication was," Meister said.
"We know that they had contact with the tower prior to the crash and investigators are looking into that today to find out what that communication was,"
Officials are also examining whether weather played any role. No cause has been determined.
No buildings were damaged. No one on the ground was hurt. The Sauk County Sheriff's Office notified the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board, which will lead the investigation into what brought the plane down.
Emergency crews searched for survivors after the first reports came in Tuesday night. They found none. By Wednesday the wooded crash site remained closed off while investigators worked the scene.
The FAA and NTSB will take the lead on determining how a private Piper PA-46 on a routine in-state hop ended with six people dead and no answers yet on the final moments in the air.
Names of the victims, the owner of the aircraft, the exact words exchanged with the tower, and any weather findings have not been made public. Those details sit with investigators now tasked with sorting a sudden loss of six lives, including a child's, over rural Wisconsin woods.
When a small plane falls out of the sky with a child aboard, the public is owed a full and honest accounting, not delays, not fog, and not unanswered questions left to linger.
