Witness Says Plane 'Flew Straight Up Into Clouds'

A Piper PA-28 Archer went down Monday in Tennessee's Claiborne County, in a wooded area about 35 miles northeast of Knoxville.

The Claiborne County Sheriff's Office identified the pilot as 58-year-old Larry Sanders of Wapakanetas, OH according to Knoxville's WVLT Channel 8. Sanders reportedly was enroute from Ohio to Pigeon Forge, TN. The aircraft is registered to an Ohio developer.

Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Les Dorr confirmed the single fatality but released few other details about the crash near the Tennessee-Kentucky-Virginia state line.

Circumstances of the crash were not yet known, according to Dorr, but an FAA investigation has been launched.

David Breeding, local director of Homeland Security, said of a witness report, "He saw the plane come down out of the clouds, it was sputtering a little bit, like it was in trouble, and as he watched, it didn't climb high enough to make it over this ridge area here." The sheriff said the plane was running when it made impact.

Another witness told the media it appeared the pilot was trying to make it to a nearby field for an emergency landing and crashed just a few yards from that field.

According to Knoxville's WBIR, witnesses reported the plane "circling the area a few times, flew straight up into the clouds," then "came crashing down into the trees." These witnesses called 911 and assisted rescuers by guiding them to the scene of the crash. But the pilot was already dead.

"We had some calls come into the 911 center that there was a plane in distress and then they called back and said that it had crashed," said Breeding. "When we got down here, we immediately began to search the area and found one victim in the plane."

"It looked like it was pretty high to me when I first saw it," said witness T.J. Harrell.

"When it came this way, it was coming down, but when it got quiet, I thought, 'Well, he's okay,' but within three seconds I heard the crash," Harrell said.

FMI: www.faa.gov, www.ntsb.gov