A retired Pueblo police officer and a Pueblo sheriff’s captain were killed in a plane crash while they were searching for illegal pot fields in the San Isabel National Forest.
The single-engine Piper Super Cruiser left Pueblo Memorial Airport Friday morning. The plane was supposed to return to the airport by 10 a.m., but it didn’t make it.
The names of the victims have not been released by authorities but the Pueblo Chieftain identified them as Sheriff’s Capt. Leide DeFusco and John Barger, a retired police captain.
“Both men were close personal friends of mine and both were law enforcement professionals,” Sheriff Kirk Taylor said at a news conference Friday.
Families of both men have been notified.
Authorities said the retired Pueblo police officer was the pilot and the deputy was a passenger. They were going to an area where they had spotted a marijuana grow operation two weeks earlier.
Flight for Life spotted smoke from the wreckage and used that as a beacon to find the crash site.
A hiker discovered the plane wreckage just north of Cisneros Trail on Greenhorn Mountain in Custer County.
Investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board will do an investigation.
The bodies have not yet been recovered, said Charlene Graham, Pueblo sheriff’s spokeswoman.
Kirk Mitchell: 303-954-1206, or
