CUBA, Mo. • Officials continued their investigation Monday into Sunday's single-engine plane crash that took the life of a St. Charles man and the family dog in a wooded area during a severe storm.
Jeffrey B. Hansen, 54, the pilot, was the only person on board with Daisy, a black Labrador retriever. Hansen owns a well-known O’Fallon, Mo.-based tree service company that also has a location in Branson.
The company issued a statement on its website that read: "It is with great sadness and reverence that we say goodbye to our founder, Jeff Hansen. The Hansen Team is grateful for your kind words and sympathies during this time.
"Our company is strong as a result of Jeff Hansen’s careful guidance and preparation; and as a result of the second generation of Hansens carrying on the legacy of honest, quality work and goodwill.
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"We look forward to serving you for years to come — and we thank you for your continued business and support, both current customers and new. Jeff Hansen will simply be guiding us all from a higher place."
The plane, a Piper PA-32, went down about 7:45 a.m. in Crawford County, about three-quarters of a mile north of the airport, said Sgt. Cody Fulkerson, a public information officer with the Missouri Highway Patrol.
Fulkerson said Monday officials with the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Administration were working to get the remnants of the plane out of the wooded area and into a hangar at the Cuba airport where they would be conducting their forensic examination of the wreckage.
Tony Molinaro, an official with the FAA, said the NTSB is in charge of the investigation, and it usually takes about a week for a preliminary report. An official with the NTSB did not immediately return calls seeking comment.
Fulkerson said two witnesses had independently contacted him and said they saw the plane splitting up in the air.
“There were severe storms in the Rolla area at the time the plane went down, and the storms definitely have the capability of tearing up a plane,” he said. “Both said that it sounded like the engine was in distress. When they looked up it came out the clouds and was breaking up.”
Hansen’s son and some family friends traveled to the crash site Sunday immediately after hearing the news.
Fulkerson said that according to Hansen’s son, Hansen had texted his wife, “saying that he was in very bad weather and that there was lots of turbulence.”
Flight records show that Hansen took the plane from Creve Coeur Airport to Branson West Municipal on June 3. Fulkerson said Hansen was flying Sunday from Branson to Creve Coeur. Records show that he took off at 7:01 a.m.
The family has declined to comment.
Hansen, founder and president of Hansen’s Tree Service and Environmental Wood Resources Inc., started his tree service company in 1988 as a part-time job so his wife could stay home with their children, according to the company’s website. Hansen had worked full time for BFI Waste Management.
In 2005, the company became the first in Missouri to be certified by the Tree Care Industry Association. It now employs about 90 people including 10 International Society of Arboriculture-certified arborists. The tree service operates a fleet of 75 trucks and has diversified into numerous related services.
Sunday’s accident was the second fatal plane crash in the area around Rolla in three days.
On Friday morning, four members of a Utah family who were visiting relatives near Success, Mo., were killed when their plane crashed on take-off from a private grass airstrip. The Beechcraft A-36 got about 100 feet off the ground before stalling.
C. Mark Openshaw, 43, a member of the Utah education board since 2008, and his family were returning to their home in Provo, Utah. Other victims were Openshaw’s wife, Amy, 43; their 15-year-old son, Tanner; and 12-year-old daughter, Ellie.
The lone survivor is a 5-year-old child who is recovering in a hospital in Springfield, Fulkerson said. The father was a well-known educator in Provo.
“That happened on the private property of the grandfather, and he saw it happen,” Fulkerson said.
“These are always hard.”