Weather May Be To Blame For Fatal Plane Crash

(Prentiss County, MS) Investigators are going through the debris of a deadly plane crash in northeast Mississippi.

 It crashed during a violent thunderstorm Sunday just outside of Booneville, Mississippi.

A father, mother and their daughter were on the plane, on their way to Ole Miss where Caroline Bartley was a student.  

Tim Freeman was close enough to hear the small plane’ s engine sputter Sunday afternoon, “It went whoosh, whoosh, whoosh. And then it just stopped, immediately.”

Moments later the Piper Cherokee Lance, crashed in this rural area of Prentiss County 35 miles northeast of Tupelo.

Freeman says he and others in the town of New Site Mississippi rushed to help,

“We just had to go and look, we had to. Just in case there was survivors and anything like that. It was a mission that we had to try. But you know, it was just too late.”

A father, mother and daughter from Columbus, Georgia were inside, but didn’t survive.

They were leaving their vacation home in Andrews North Carolina on their way to Oxford.

James Bartley, his youngest daughter Caroline and Bartley’s wife Terry were headed to Oxford, Mississippi where Caroline was a student.  

Monday, a team of federal investigators were at the crash site, but wouldn’t comment on the cause of the crash or if a violent thunderstorm Sunday could have played a part.

“You can see it, probably, down in there.”

Morgan Johnson was one of several people searching the woods Sunday for survivors and found a large piece of the plane, “The cockpit was about six-foot underground. And you really couldn’t tell much. You could tell everybody was deceased, you know, that was in the plane.”

The investigation into what happened is far from over.

Crews brought in a truck with lights and generators to help search the debris field.

Morgan Johnson says his prayers are with the victims and their families, “I wish I hadn’t seen it.”