A Highlands Ranch pilot was killed Sunday when a single-engine aircraft nose-dived into the ground on a ranch 2 miles from Kiowa in Elbert County.
The pilot was identified as 53-year-old Gary Williams, who is believed to have taken off from Centennial Airport, where he had earlier filed a flight plan, said Lt. Michelle Mattive, spokeswoman for the Sheriff’s Department.
She said the impact badly damaged the Mooney M2OC, which landed near a creek.
“We don’t know if it was a mechanical or medical problem,” said Mattive.
There were no witnesses to the crash, and the exact time the plane went down is not known.
But she said that a woman who lived on the ranch had driven by the scene at 8 a.m. Sunday and saw nothing. When she returned shortly before noon, however, she spotted the wreckage and called the Sheriff’s Department.
The plane was not registered to Williams; it belonged to someone else, Mattive said.
Mattive said investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board responded to the crash Sunday afternoon.
Howard Pankratz: 303-954-1939 or hpankratz@denverpost.com
