Wreckage of plane discovered in West Virginia
The missing airplane in which three Kiski Valley business people were travelling in has been found in West Virginia, according to a spokesman for the Civil Air Patrol's West Virginia Wing.
Officials did not immediately have information about the three people on board, including pilot Michael Fiori Garrone, 52, of Allegheny Township. Also aboard were Garrone's friends, Parks Township couple Chas Armitage Jr., 52, and Laura Stettmier, 49.
A Civil Air Patrol observer in a helicopter operated by the West Virginia State Police spotted the aircraft, according to Jeff Schrock, spokesman for the Civil Air Patrol's West Virginia Wing.
It is in a rugged mountainous area of southern Hardy County near Peru, which is less than five miles from the Virginia border.
The plane went missing Sunday evening as it was en route from Danville in southern Virginia to Johnstown. Garrone reportedly had requested permission to land at the Grant County Airport in Petersburg, W.Va., but his plane dropped out of radio and radar contact near Bergton, Va.
The aircraft was in radio and radar contact with air traffic controllers until it was lost about 12 miles southeast of Grant County at about 8:45 p.m. on Sunday.
Pete Frejkowski, chief of Lower Kiski Emergency Services in Leechburg, was one of five members of that organization that went to assist in the search.
Thursday night he said local authorities told them "there was nothing more that we could do" sometime before 10 p.m.
"They said the last group of searchers were coming out, and they weren't inserting any more," Frejkowski said.
But he said West Virginia authorities gave no official word on the fate of the three people aboard the plane.
Frejkowski said they began the journey home a short time later, but as they were leaving they did not hear any radio communications indicating rescues were ongoing.
He said the Lower Kiski contingent arrived in West Virginia early Wednesday and were involved with ground searches.
"Ground searches were concentrating on the wooded areas that were not visible by air," Frejkowski said.
He said he doesn't know how close they were to the site where the plane was found.
"We were doing multiple grids," he said. "We were all in the same ballpark, if you will."
He downplayed the role of his unit but singled out "a tremendous amount of family and friends" of the plane's occupants for their work in helping organize the search.
He said there were a number of other people from the Alle-Kiski Valley involved in the search.
"There were a whole lot of familiar faces from the Leechburg area," Frejkowski said. "I know that Allegheny Township had people down there -- from Allegheny Township Emergency Management and Markle Fire Department."
The search Thursday had focused on Hardy, Grant and Pendleton counties, near the Monongahela National Forest in eastern West Virginia. The terrain is marked by densely forested mountains.
"Within those counties," Schrock said before the plane's discovery, "we're basically going from the last known position approximately 20 miles (in a) circle."
The massive search was in its fourth day in several eastern West Virginia counties with a total of 12 Civil Air Patrol aircraft, and numerous CAP ground teams from West Virginia, Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina. In addition to the West Virginia State Police helicopter, a Maryland State Police helicopter also participated in the search. CAP units and numerous EMS units also searched for the aircraft in Virginia.
The West Virginia Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management asked all search agencies in the state to provide maximum effort, Schrock said.
Lush, leafy trees made the search tough.
"I had talked with one of our operations chiefs at the base there. He said that I guess one of the pilots in the helicopter was flying at treetop level, and it was so thick that you couldn't see the ground," Schrock said. "And with the ground teams, it was the same thing. They could hear the helicopter, but they couldn't see him."
