Planes collide in mid-air over Niwot Road - 3 dead

A loud crash interrupted a quiet Saturday morning in Niwot when two airplanes collided in mid-air and fell to the ground, resulting in the deaths of the two pilots and one passenger. The victims were identified as 22-year-old Daniel Wilmoth, Samuel Fisher, 23, and 69-year-old Henry Butler. Two were found dead in one of the airplanes and one was found dead in the other.

The Boulder County Sheriff's office reported receiving multiple calls shortly before 9 a.m. from area residents who heard the collision. After the collision, the wreckage of one plane landed in a pasture on the south side of Niwot Road in the area of 95th Street, and the other landed in trees along an irrigation ditch on the north side of Niwot Road, just across the road from the home of Jeff and Cindy Wolcott.

Mountain View Fire Rescue Chief Dave Beebe said, "We got here, found one of the wreckages relatively quickly. The other wreckage was in some trees and some other vegetation so that one took a little bit longer."

The Wolcotts were inside their home and heard the unmistakable sound of a plane crash. Cindy Wolcott said, "We heard the two pops, we actually heard the crash. It was loud. Even though it was a small plane, it was so close. It was obviously a plane crash. I've never heard one before, [but] that was a plane crash."

She and her husband went outside looking for smoke, but did not see anything. As emergency vehicles sped down Niwot Road east of their home, they walked down toward the wreckage on the south side of Niwot Road. When they returned, they found first responders examining the wreckage of the other plane. "We walked past it twice and didn't even see it," she said, as the plane was obscured by vegetation.

Cary Hayes, who lives between the two sites where the wreckage landed, said, "I heard a pop this morning around 9 o'clock. He described finding "a crumpled mess of a small plane." He said, "It's not uncommon to see lots of small planes, especially on a weekend morning. It's terrible, my brother is a pilot and I've spent some time in a Cessna."

Like the Wolcotts, Hayes was inside when he heard the crash, then went outside to investigate. "My neighbor alerted me," Hayes said. "He actually saw the plane go down on Niwot Road. It's hard to believe on a clear sunny day."

Hayes expressed sadness at the loss of life. "We all sort of pull together in times like this. I really appreciate this about our little community."

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) were on the scene to investigate, and though a preliminary investigation will likely be completed in 15 days, it may be a year or more before the cause of the crash is finally determined. According to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), the types of aircraft involved were a Cessna 172 and a Sonex Xenos. The Sonex Xenos is a lightweight, aluminum, low-wing, two-seat aircraft.

The Sonex Xenos, which had taken off at about 8:38 a.m.from Platte Valley Airpark in Hudson,

was registered to Butler. The Cessna was registered to the Spartan College of Aeronautics and Technology, which has a campus at Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport in Broomfield. The Cessna, occupied by Wilmoth and Fisher, had departed from the airport in Broomfield about 10 minutes after the Xenos took off. NTSB investigator Mike Folkerts said the Xenos flew west from Hudson and collided with the Cessna as it began turning east.

Neither plane had a midair-collision warning system, according to the NTSB, and neither was required to have one.