A prominent Tucson businessman and his wife have been identified as the couple killed Wednesday evening in a plane crash at the Marana airport, sources said.
Chris Sheafe and his wife, Jacque, died in the fiery crash that occurred about 5:15 p.m. at Marana Regional Airport.
Few details about the crash have been released, but officials say the Piper PA-32 slid off the runway and burst into flames. Reports say the couple was returning to Tucson from Indianapolis.
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The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating.
No other injuries were reported, and no other aircraft were involved, the Marana Police Department said Wednesday in a news release.
It is the second deadly crash in just over a year at the small airport northwest of Tucson. In February 2025, two people were killed in a midair collision.
Chris Sheafe was a real estate investor who also served as treasurer of the Rio Nuevo Board. Jacque Sheafe was a sales consultant at PulteGroup, according to LinkedIn.
Rio Nuevo is a tax-increment financing district. That means it is funded by a portion of the sales-tax revenue created within the district, an area that generally stretches from downtown and along East Broadway to Park Place.
Chris Sheafe's Rio Nuevo profile says he was a longtime Tucson resident, and after working in Washington state and Scottsdale, returned to and soon became a partner at Estes Homes in 1981.
During the 1980s Estes was a large regional developer of commercial and residential projects and Sheafe was the partner responsible for all of the company's housing and apartment developments.
Sheafe also was a partner in building Loews Ventana Canyon Hotel and Country Club, and the surrounding residential development, in the 1980s.
Among many high-profile local issues he worked on over his career, Sheafe was on a committee that developed a Pima County habitat conservation plan in 2006 to meet Endangered Species Act requirements. The following year, he was appointed by Tucson's city manager to a committee to select a developer of a publicly financed convention center hotel downtown. In 2023, Sheafe was on a commission tasked with determining whether to build a new county jail. He also served on the Pima County Bond Committee over the years.
In 2014, when Martha McSally was elected to a Tucson-area congressional seat, she named Sheafe, president of C. Sheafe Co., to serve as chairman of her transition team.
Currently, Sheafe and his partners were developing Rancho del Lago, a master-planned community on Tucson's southeast side. He separately was involved in developing several smaller, custom projects in the area, the profile says.
Sheafe was involved in numerous community organizations, including a term as chairman of the Tucson International Airport Authority. Other community involvement included serving on the Southern Arizona Home Builders Association, the Tucson Breakfast Club, the Southern Arizona Water Resource Association and Tucson Regional Water Council.
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