A retired engineer who built an experimental plane in his garage was one of two people killed when the aircraft crashed Friday in Weld County.
Ronald A. Denight, 64, of Northglenn, took off from Erie Municipal Airport at 6 a.m. and crashed nose first in a field about 20 miles southeast of the airport near Lochbuie, said Margie Martinez, Weld County Sheriff’s spokeswoman.
She said she could not release the other crash victim’s name because relatives had not yet been notified.
The two were headed to Bartlesville, Okla., Martinez said. The Civil Air Patrol discovered the crash Friday afternoon after receiving a signal from a beacon on the plane.
Denight called his two-seat, fixed-wing plane the Denight 100D2, said Allen Kenitzer, spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration.
The FAA will investigate the cause of the crash.
Denight’s neighbor of 30 years, Jeanie Romero, 60, said Saturday that she remembered the excitement when Denight finished building the aircraft in the early 1980s.
All the neighborhood children helped roll it into the street, where Denight lowered the wings into position, she said.
“That was quite an event for our neighborhood,” Romero said.
Her daughter, Carrie Romero, said Denight would often fly around the country to air shows. After his retirement, he became an airplane mechanic.
“He was wonderful,” Carrie Romero said. “He was a really nice guy.”
Staff writer Kirk Mitchell can be reached at 303-820-1206 or kmitchell@denverpost.com.
