A victim’s smartwatch helped search-and-rescue crews locate a plane that went down in dense woods in Montana, the local sheriff’s office said Monday.
Responding crews found all three people on board dead, the Gallatin County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement.
They were identified as Rodney Conover, 60, and Madison Conover, 23, of Tennessee; and Kurt Enoch Robey, 55, of Utah, according to the office.
The plane they were in departed from West Yellowstone Airport on Thursday just before midnight, the office said. The U.S. Transportation Department Aero Division alerted local authorities that the aircraft’s location was unknown, it said.
Search-and-rescue crews gained access to location information on a smartwatch worn by one of the three, leading them to the remote crash site south of West Yellowstone on Friday afternoon, the sheriff’s office said.
Two planes used by search-and-rescue crews made the discovery, but team members on the ground still had the work of getting to the crash site in what the sheriff’s office described as “dense timber.”
Search-and-rescue team members “located the downed airplane and confirmed all three occupants were deceased,” it said. “The decedents were extricated from the plane and transported by helicopter where their remains were turned over to a Gallatin County Sheriff’s Office deputy coroner.”
The Federal Aviation Administration did not immediately respond to a request for information. A report on the FAA’s aviation safety database says the aircraft was a variant of the Piper Cherokee, a small, single-engine plane. It was carrying two flight crew members and one passenger, according to the agency.
The FAA was tasked, alongside the National Transportation Safety Board, with investigating the cause of the crash.
The weather for the area in recent days has included afternoon wind gusts as strong as 20 mph or greater, chilly overnight temperatures and daytime high temperatures mostly in the upper 70s.
Sheriff Dan Springer offered his “deepest condolences” to loved ones of the deceased.
