Five adults and one child were killed when a single-engine plane crashed Tuesday near the Wisconsin Dells, a popular Midwestern tourist destination. (Shutterstock)
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Five adults and one child were killed when a single-engine plane crashed Tuesday near the Wisconsin Dells, a popular Midwestern tourist destination.
The plane, a fixed-wing Piper Mirage Aircraft, was making a return trip to Menomonie, Wisconsin, about 70 miles east of Minneapolis, from Kenosha, Wisconsin, near the Illinois border, when it crashed, Lt. Steven Schram of the Sauk County Sheriff’s Office said in a phone interview.
There were no survivors.
No people on the ground were injured, and no structures were damaged, officials said.
The National Transportation Safety Board, the federal agency that investigates plane crashes, said the pilot, who like others aboard has not yet been publicly identified, reported icing while traveling at 24,000 feet and requested permission from air traffic control to descend.
The request was approved and the plane “entered a right descending turn that increased in rate until communications and data tracking were lost,” the NTSB said in a statement.
The plane crashed about 9:30 p.m. in a heavily wooded residential area in the hamlet of Dellona, authorities said. Dellona is about an hour’s drive north of Madison. Around the same time, the National Weather Service reported thunderstorms in the vicinity.
Randi Kubek, 60, a retired school principal, said she was in her bedroom with her two dogs when she heard the “unmistakable sound” of a plane losing altitude.
“It sounded like it was coming down real quickly, and I could hear an engine sputtering,” said Kubek, who feared the plane was going to hit her house.
“I heard a big boom and I saw light,” she added. “It was a real loud sound of metal crumbling. My whole house shook. I knew a plane had crashed.”
She said she heard sirens before she could call 911.
The NTSB investigators, who were en route to the scene Wednesday, will look into the pilot, the aircraft and the operating environment, the statement said. The Federal Aviation Administration and the NTSB will be leading the investigation with help from local and state agencies, according to the Sauk County sheriff.
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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
By Billy Witz and Gary Achterberg
c. 2026 The New York Times Company
