SANPETE COUNTY, Utah, July 2, 2019 (Gephardt Daily) — Officials have identified two men who died after a small aircraft crashed Monday afternoon east of Ephraim in the foothills of Bald Mountain.
Sanpete County Sheriff’s Office officials said the deceased are John Weber, 63, of Scottsdale, Arizona and Thomas Bjork, 66, of Orangevale, California.
Late Monday night, the Sanpete County Sheriff’s Office confirmed there were no survivors.
Detective Derick Taysom said Sanpete County Dispatch received a 911 call notifying them that a group of OHV operators had found the downed plane, and reporting that the aircraft’s two occupants were deceased.
The crash was approximately four miles northeast of Ephraim.
The sheriff’s office, Sanpete County Search and Rescue, and the Medical Examiner’s Officer went to the scene, and the pilot and passenger, both male, were confirmed deceased. It’s not clear at this time which man was the pilot and which was the passenger.
The aircraft was identified as a “small glider-type of aircraft.”
In the course of the investigation, officials learned that the aircraft had taken off from the Nephi airport at approximately 3 p.m. and was heading to an airport near Richfield.
The cause of the crash is unknown at this time. The Federal Aviation Administration is conducting an investigation Tuesday, Taysom said.
This was the second fatal crash of an aircraft in Utah since the weekend. A single-engine two-seat aircraft carrying the pilot and a passenger was reported missing Sunday and was found Monday morning in San Juan County. The two men on board were confirmed deceased.
Gephardt Daily will update this developing story as more information is made available.
