The pilot and passenger of the multiengine, turboprop plane that crashed into two East Haven houses on Friday have been identified as 54-year-old Bill Henningsgaard, co-founder of the Washington state–based education organization Eastside Pathways and former Microsoft executive, and his son 17-year-old Max. The two were en route to Tweed New Haven Airport from New Jersey’s Teterboro Airport on an East Coast college tour. As the authorities suspected on Friday afternoon, 13-year-old Sade Brantley and her one-year-old sister Madisyn Mitchell, who were in one of the houses the plane hit and were unaccounted for afterward, were also killed in the accident.
The authorities are still trying to figure out what caused the awful incident. Tweed Airport’s Lori Hoffman-Soares told the Associated Press, “All we know is that it missed the approach and continued on,” and added that Henningsgaard had been communicating with air-traffic control but never issued a distress call. Reporters have also learned that this wasn’t Henningsgaard’s first wreck: In 2009, his small plane’s engine failed and caused him to crash into Washington’s Columbia River.
