A Safford man and his three young children were among six people who died Wednesday night when their small plane crashed into a mountain east of Phoenix.
A search and rescue mission that began Wednesday night in the Superstition Mountains turned into a recovery mission that concluded Thanksgiving morning with the discovery of the bodies of these six people, the Pinal County Sheriff's Office said in a news release:
• Russell Hardy, 31, of Thatcher, Ariz. He was a co-pilot and partial owner of the airplane.
• Joseph Hardwick, 22, of Safford, Ariz. He was an airplane mechanic.
• Shawn Perry, 39, of Safford. He was a co-pilot.
• Morgan Perry, 9, of Gold Canyon, Ariz.
• Logan Perry, 8, of Gold Canyon.
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• Luke Perry, 6, of Gold Canyon.
Shawn Perry and co-pilot Hardy took off from Safford Wednesday afternoon and landed at Falcon Field Airport in Mesa at about 4:30 p.m., the press release says. They had made the flight to pick up Perry's three children, then head back to Safford to celebrate Thanksgiving.
They took off at 6:15 p.m. in a Rockwell 690A dual-engine airplane and crashed minutes later near the top of the mountain in an area known as Flat Iron.
The Pinal Sheriff's Office worked with the Arizona Department of Public Safety to find the deceased.
The Perry children lived with their mother in Gold Canyon, an unincorporated community east of Phoenix, said Pinal County sheriff's spokesman Elias Johnson. Hardy is survived by his wife and son, Johnson said.
The cause of the crash is under investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration.
The plane was registered to Ponderosa Aviation of Safford, according to the company's website. Shawn Perry was director of operations, according to a narrative about the company on the website of Twin Commander LLC, an airplane manufacturer that sold planes to Ponderosa Aviation.
Contact reporter Brady McCombs at 573-4213 or bmccombs@azstarnet.com
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