Victim of deadly plane crash had survived Columbine massacre

DENVER -- One of the victims in the deadly crash of two small planes over Denver was a survivor of the 1999 Columbine High School massacre.

Jonathan Ross Ladd had been a junior when two students at the school opened fire, killing 12 classmates, a teacher and themselves. Ladd, who had spoken publicly about the attack, had since taken flight lessons and developed a love of airplanes, his grandmother said.

On Friday, she said, Ladd was piloting a single-engine Cessna bound for Cheyenne, Wyo., with two friends aboard when the plane collided with a twin-engine Piper and both plummeted into a residential neighborhood. All five people in the two planes died.

"Flying is, was, his passion. It was his life, and we have to accept that," Ladd's grandmother, Connie Hull of Seattle, told KWGN-TV in Denver.

The Denver coroner identified the crash victims as Fred Greg White, 51, of Westminster; Leo Larson, 57, of Northglenn; Isaac Louis Murrow, 22, of Granby; and Curtis Paul Maxey, 22, and Ladd, 20, both of Littleton.

Brian Kilburn, director of operations at Key Lime Flight, said Ladd had received flight training and rented aircraft from the company before.

He was "basically a very thorough, very conscientious pilot," Kilburn said in Sunday's editions of The Denver Post.

Larson, identified as the owner of the other plane, was a certified commercial pilot and flight instructor.

Neither pilot had filed a flight plan, which was not required. However, both had been in contact with air traffic control, National Transportation Safety Board investigator Arnold Scott said.

NTSB spokeswoman Lauren Peduzzi said Sunday that one of the pilots had been warned to be on the lookout for other planes in the area, but she said the warning was not specific enough to indicate a collision was imminent.

Peduzzi did not say which pilot was warned or how long before the collision the warning came.

Aviation officials said the Cessna 172 Skyhawk had taken off from Centennial Airport in suburban southeast Denver. The other plane, a twin-engine Piper Cheyenne II, had left Jefferson County Airport, northwest of Denver, bound for Centennial.

A witness said he saw the planes coming together and at the very last second saw the Cheyenne Piper make a steep or sharp bank.

"Whether that is true or not, I don't know ... he looks like he made some evasive maneuver," Scott said.

The Cessna just missed a senior citizens' apartment building before slamming into a house and causing an explosion. The cabin of the Piper ended up in a yard a few feet from the home's back door. Six people on the ground a firefighter were injured.

Investigators had recovered most of the debris from the planes and planned to review radar and voice recordings and interview air traffic controllers at Denver International Airport to determine why the planes collided.

Denver Mayor Wellington Webb also planned to meet with Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta to discuss whether tighter flight restrictions should be enforced in the area, said mayoral spokesman Andrew Hudson.

According to residents of the area, about a half mile from the Denver Broncos' football stadium, there was another collision in same area in 1974 that sent two other planes to the ground, killing four people.