downed-aircraft-search

Four teenagers and four adults returning from a hunting trip were on board a small plane that crashed off the coast of North Carolina over the weekend, authorities said Tuesday.

Everyone on board was from North Carolina. Six of the passengers lived in coastal Carteret County, a mostly rural area that includes tourist destinations and the southern edge of the Outer Banks.

Divers found the plane’s fuselage and cabin in the Atlantic Ocean about 3 miles (5 kilometers) from shore and in about 55 feet (17 meters) of water, Carteret County Sheriff Asa Buck told reporters Tuesday.

Crews have been removing human remains as well as aviation equipment that could help investigators determine the crash’s cause, Buck said. The Coast Guard said Tuesday that it was suspending its search but would continue to work alongside local partners through ongoing recovery operations.

The sheriff said the plane crash and recovery efforts have been “tremendously hard” because the community is so close-knit.

“Half my family’s from down here,” Buck said. “I know the people involved. And I know some of them very closely.”

The sheriff’s office identified the adults on board the plane as pilot Ernest Durwood Rawls, 67, of Greenville; Jeffrey Worthington Rawls, 28, of Greenville; Stephanie Ann McInnis Fulcher, 42, of Sea Level; and Douglas Hunter Parks, 45, of Sea Level.

The teenagers were identified as Jonathan Kole McInnis, 15, of Sea Level; Noah Lee Styron, 15, of Cedar Island; Michael Daily Shepard, 15, of Atlantic; and Jacob Nolan Taylor, 16, of Atlantic.

Carteret County includes communities such as Emerald Isle and Atlantic Beach as well as the Cape Lookout National Seashore. The county also includes the waterfront town of Atlantic, which has a population of about 500 people and is located in a region called Down East.

Rescue crews in Carteret County, North Carolina, search for a small plane that crashed off the coast over the weekend. (Photo credit: NewsChannel 12/Sinclair Broadcasting)

 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

You may use these HTML tags and attributes:

<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

Loading...