Group Attended NASCAR Race

The search for a missing plane came to a sad end on Wednesday. Searchers found the wreckage of a Piper Saratoga that crashed while carrying three Illinois couples home from a NASCAR race in South Carolina. FAA spokeswoman Elizabeth Isham Cory said there were no survivors.

Ground crews had been searching a heavily wooded mountainside in southeastern Kentucky near where the plane was last spotted on radar Sunday night. Cory said investigators from the FAA and National Transportation Safety Board were enroute to the scene.

Authorities said the aircraft departed from Darlington (SC) on Sunday headed for Bloomington (IL) with a pilot and five others on board. All had ties to the central Illinois town of Carlock and were returning from a NASCAR race in Darlington.

On the plane were Curt and Linda Piercy of Normal; Don and Amy Maurer of Carlock; and Amy Maurer's brother, Brad Webb, and his girlfriend, Erica Edgington, also of Carlock. Amy Maurer had given her husband the NASCAR tickets as a birthday present.

The search began Monday afternoon with Civil Air Patrol crews flying over the plane's entire projected flight path in Kentucky and parts of Virginia, Tennessee, Indiana and Illinois.

FMI: www.faa.gov