AP News, August 8th, 2007
A New Jersey family was identified Tuesday as the four people killed when their single-engine plane crashed into a home and set it ablaze in Sitka.
No one was in the home when the plane plowed into it a block from a downtown street bustling with cruise ship tourists visiting the coastal town on Monday afternoon.
Robert Hendrickson, 45, died along with his daughters, Julianne, 14, and Emily, 9, said Sitka police Lt. Barry Allen. Also killed was Hendrickson's fiancee, Linda Kundair, 34. All were living in different New Jersey towns, Allen said.
Allen said it was too early to have any indication of why the plane crashed.
The investigation was turned over to the National Transportation Safety Board, which sent personnel to the site immediately after the crash.
Jim La Belle, the NTSB's regional director for Alaska, said the single-engine Piper departed Victoria, British Columbia, on Monday morning and was heading to the Sitka airport when it went down.
Witnesses told investigators the plane was circling the area twice before "making a fairly steep descent out of the clouds," La Belle said.
It was about 1 p.m., when the plane emerged from low-lying clouds, clipped some trees and plunged into a single-family home, witnesses and police said.
The plane was owned by Hendrickson Aviation LLC, a Delaware corporation, according to the Federal Aviation Administration's registry.
Sitka, with a population of nearly 9,000, i about 90 miles south of Juneau, on the west coast of Baranof Island.
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Associated Press writer James Halpin contributed to this report.
