Erie Plane Crash Victims Identified, Includes 3 Children
The victims of the Erie plane crash that left five people dead have been identified as prominent Erie real estate lawyer Oliver Frascona, his girlfriend, and her three children were also among the victims.
Frascona’s girlfriend was identified by The Weld County Coroner as 41-year-old Tori Rains-Wedan, according to the Daily Camera Erie News. Her three children were identified as 15-year-old Mason Wedan and 11-year-old twin brothers, Austin and Hunter. A dog was also among the victims of the Erie plane crash.
Two of the victims were taken to an area hospital.
Frascona was a well-known real estate professional and a partner in the respected Boulder firm of Frascona, Joiner, Goodman, and Greenstein P.C.
Rains-Wedan owned a company called Educated Minds, which provides continuing education classes for real estate brokers. Frascona, 67, was piloting the six-passenger, single-engine Piper PA 46 plane when it crashed near the Erie Municipal Airport, a few hundred yards northwest of the runway. Oliver lived near the airport in Erie’s Airpark neighborhood, according to ABC7 Denver.
The plane was on a return flight from the Centennial Airport but never landed. Instead, it crashed in a field around 12 noon on Sunday just a short distance from the Erie runway while coming in for a landing. The plane is registered to Frascona’s Real Estate School LLC.
National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) officials said on Monday that they are investigating the Erie plane crash. They didn’t have any answers about what had caused it yet.
“It (the wreckage) will be transported today to a secure facility in Greeley Colorado where we will continue to investigate both the airframe and the engine,” said Air Safety Investigator NTSB Courtney Leidler.
A neighbor of Frascona, Tom Van Lone, told ABC7 that his friend was an experienced pilot.
“He was a really nice guy and a good pilot with a lot of training hours,” Van Lone said. “He flew a couple of times a week.”
Van Lone also said that a favorite pastime of Frascona was to share real estate stories and talk shop. He described Oliver as “full of energy” and said it was “truly tragic” that everyone on the plane died in the crash.
According to the Denver CBS affiliate, officials with the NTSB did say that the landing gear of the plane was stowed at the time of the crash, and the pilot was trying to land from the south. Witnesses added that they heard the plane’s engine sputtering, but the NTSB said it is too early to connect sounds from the plane with the possible cause of the Erie plane crash.
