4th member of California family dies after Fresno-area small plane crash

LATEST Sept. 7, 7 p.m.A fourth person has died following a small plane crash Saturday in the Fresno area. The Fresno County Sheriff’s Office said Monday that Craig Eady, 44, of Auberry, had died as a result of the crash. The sheriff’s department had previously announced that Eady’s wife Danna, a flight instructor, and two children had died in the crash. 

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Sept. 7, 12:30 p.m. A flight instructor was among three people killed in a small plane crash on Saturday. The Fresno County Sheriff’s Office said Sunday that Danna Eady, 41, of Auberry, died in the hospital after suffering severe injuries in the crash a day earlier. 

According to her LinkedIn, Eady worked as a flight instructor at Reedley College and was also the founder of Meraki Aviation, an aviation company providing aircraft rentals and flight instruction. 

Tony Botti, the spokesperson for the Fresno County Sheriff’s Office, said the plane crash was reported just before 2 p.m. Saturday afternoon. Firefighting personnel and other first responders arrived at the crash site at the 7300 block of N. Blythe Ave. to find the small, single-engine, fixed-wing aircraft on fire on a bluff above the San Joaquin River. The fire was extinguished before it could spread to neighboring areas, but responders found two deceased children within the wreckage. Two other passengers, Eady and an adult man, were found outside the plane with severe injuries and taken to the hospital. 

Botti said the National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the cause of the crash. There is currently no estimate for how long the plane was in the air or what its destination was, but the plane is believed to have taken off from nearby Sierra Sky Park.

“We don’t know what happened,” Botti told reporters on Sunday. “We haven’t been able to interview anybody that’s involved, so at this point, it’s going to be up to investigators to start backtracking, talking to anybody that may have known about this flight, any communication logs, things like that.”

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Botti said at this point they do not know whether Eady was in the pilot’s seat when the plane crashed, and warned it could take up to a year for the full NTSB report to be released on the cause of the crash.

In an online fundraiser, the deceased passengers were identified as Eady’s two younger sons and the sole surviving passenger as Eady’s husband Craig. Botti said the surviving passenger remains in critical condition with “life threatening” injuries. According to the fundraiser, Eady is also survived by two older children, who were not on the plane.

“While Craig fights to heal, this family is also trying to navigate a grief that is impossible to put into words,” the fundraiser’s organizers wrote. “There are no words that can make this loss less painful, but we can help make the road ahead a little less heavy.” Nearly $50,000 had been raised of the fundraiser’s $250,000 goal by publication time.