One dead after plane flying out of Menominee crashes in Wisconsin
CLARK COUNTY, Wisc. — A downstate man is dead after a small plane flying out of Menominee crashed in rural Clark County, Wisconsin.
The Sheriff’s Department says the deceased victim was Martin Siegwart, 56, of Boon, Michigan. He was a passenger on board.
The Clark County Sheriff’s Department says they received two 911 calls shortly after 10:30 a.m. Monday regarding the crash in a field in Hoard, Wisconsin. The pilot was one of those callers. The pilot told police that the plane began to ice up from the weather conditions, causing it to lose altitude. While trying to land on a road, a wing caught a tree, causing the plane to enter a ditch and hit several other trees.
“They were flying like this, coming down. You can see the skid marks in the snow,” Clark County Sheriff Gregory Herrick told WAOW, the ABC station in Wausau. “The big skid mark’s the tail, and the little one is the left wheel of the plane.”
The pilot, Mark Siegwart, 27, of Hammond, Indiana, and Nathan Smoot, 41, of North Pole, Alaska, were taken to St. Joseph’s Hospital in Marshfield with what appeared to be non–life threatening injuries. The three men were in the process of flying the plane from Indiana to Alaska after Smoot recently purchased it.
The National Transportation Safety Board is leading the investigation into the crash.
[Photo courtesy Clark County Sheriff’s Office]