A retired engineer who built an experimental plane in his garage was one of three people killed in two separate aircraft crashes in the past two days in Weld and Morgan counties.
Ronald A. Denight, 64, of Northglenn, took off from Erie Municipal Airport at 6 a.m. Friday and crashed nose first in a field about 20 miles southeast of the airport near Lochbuie, said Margie Martinez, Weld County Sheriff’s spokeswoman. A second victim in the crash was not identified because relatives had not been contacted, Martinez said.
In the second crash, a Morgan County man was killed on impact when his small “homemade” plane went down in a cornfield near the Fort Morgan airport about 4:30 p.m., Saturday, Sheriff James Crone said.
“He just dropped straight out of the air into a cornfield; there was no fire,” Crone said. “The plane itself was pretty small. In fact it looked like it had only a single seat in it, but it’s so hard to tell because it was so mangled up.”
Weather is not believed to have played a factor in the second crash, the sheriff said. The plane was not taking off or landing and was believed to be flying around the airport when it crashed, he said.
“We’re looking into the possibility of engine failure,” Crone said. “One group of witnesses that saw the plane go down heard what sounded like a difficulty with the engine.”
The victim’s identity was being withheld until relatives could be notified.
In the Weld crash, the plane’s two occupants 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.
