2 injured in Cherokee County plane crash

Published 11:25 pm Saturday, March 7, 2015

1. Two recovering after plane crash near Cherokee County Airport

Two East Texans were injured when their dual pilot plane went down near the Cherokee County Airport in Rusk about 1 p.m. Saturday.

The passengers, Robert Gatewood and Jake Wise, were piloting a new Rans S-12 dual aircraft that Gatewood had recently purchased. The S-12 is an ultralight aircraft that requires two pilots to fly.

The plane went down off of County Road 1614 and County Road 1621 in Cherokee County. The wreckage was found about a quarter of a mile in the woods, and both passengers were removed from the craft before being life-flighted to ETMC, according to officials on the scene.

“They did two touch and goes, on the second time around he was coming in for final approach, and I was on the runway watching them come back around and he just went down,” Joe Parrish, of Bullard, said.

Parrish is a close friend of Gatewood and helped the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Department pinpoint the location of the wreck.

“He was coming into the runway. Something was wrong with the plane,” Parrish said. He then jumped the fence at the end of the runway and tried to search for the plane.

The cause of the accident is not yet known. The Federal Aviation Administration was on the scene late Saturday afternoon investigating.

Twitter: @TMT_Cory