From Media Reports
NOXUBEE COUNTY – A businessman from Oklahoma died after his small plane went down Thursday evening in southwest Noxubee County.
Authorities said Tracy Shirley III of Oklahoma was flying a single-engine Beechcraft Bonanza BE36 when something happened to it around 5 p.m.
The plane reportedly crashed into a pond, but debris from the plane was scattered in the Butler Road area southwest of the Mashulaville community, about 15 miles southwest of Macon.
Shirley was found by an eyewitness strapped to his chair some 250 yards away from the wreckage.
Shirley, the chief financial officer of Harrison Gypsum in Norman, Oklahoma, was the only person believed to be on the plane.
Jim Peters, a Federal Aviation Administration spokesman, said air traffic controllers in Memphis, Tenn., lost contact with the plane Thursday afternoon.
The plane had earlier departed from St. Petersburg-Clearwater International Airport in Clearwater, Fla., with a stated destination of University of Oklahoma Westheimer Airport in Norman, Okla.
A volunteer firefighter said storms were in the area at the time the plane went down, but federal investigators will make the final determination on what caused the crash.
Be the first to comment