WATERTOWN, S.D.(Watertown Public Opinion)- The two people who were on board a small jet that left Watertown, South Dakota and crashed on July 21 in western Minnesota have been identified.
David Colin Dacus, a 49-year-old from San Francisco, was pronounced dead at the scene, the Yellow Medicine County Sheriff’s Office said in a news release. Mark Ryan Ruff, a 43-year-old from Dallas, survived the crash.
The sheriff’s office received a report at 5:23 p.m. from air traffic control of a jet having engine problems near Granite Falls Municipal Airport, and less than 10 minutes later received a 911 call saying the aircraft had crashed near Highway 23.
Ruff was found standing alongside the highway by emergency responders and was given medical attention. The sheriff’s office did not say who was flying the plane.
The Bloomington Police Department’s bomb squad and the Minnesota National Guard’s 148th Air Wing responded to the scene to safely remove an unspent cartridge used for the aircraft’s ejection seat.
The aircraft involved in the crash was an Aero Vodochody L-39, according to a statement from the Federal Aviation Administration. The National Transportation Safety Board will conduct the investigation. The wreckage will be moved and examined at a different location, the sheriff’s office said.
The jet left Alpine, Wyoming, shortly before 11:30 a.m. Mountain time on the day of the crash, briefly landed in Gillette, Wyoming, and then arrived in Watertown, South Dakota, shortly after 3:30 p.m. Central time, according to FlightAware, a flight-tracking website. It departed shortly after 5 p.m., and crashed on its way to Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, near the site of EAA AirVenture, a week-long airshow that began July 21 in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.