A small plane carrying five adults and a child was in contact with air traffic control before crashing Tuesday night in a wooded area of Wisconsin. All six people aboard were killed as investigators began examining the aircraft’s final moments.
The Piper PA-46 was flying back from Kenosha to Menomonie when it crashed in the Town of Dellona in Sauk County, according to the Sauk County Sheriff’s Office.
Authorities received several reports of a downed aircraft at about 9:31 p.m. Tuesday. Emergency crews were sent to the Park Lane area, where they found the wreckage deep in a wooded section west of Herwig Road.
First responders work at the scene of a small plane crash in the Town of Dellona in Sauk County, Wisconsin, on Tuesday, Oct. 13, 2026. (FOX6 Milwaukee WITI)
Rescue teams initially searched the crash site for survivors while investigators worked to identify the plane and establish how many people had been on board.
Authorities later confirmed that all six occupants had died at the scene. Their names have not been made public.
Rescuers recovered the bodies of all six people aboard the small plane, including five adults and one child. (FOX6 Milwaukee WITI)
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Investigators are examining the plane’s communications with a nearby air traffic control tower before the crash and are also assessing whether weather conditions contributed to the accident.
“We know that they had contact with the tower prior to the crash, and investigators are looking into that today to find out what that communication was,” Sauk County Sheriff Chip Meister told FOX6 Milwaukee.
Meister said the aircraft’s owner was still unknown but confirmed that it was not a commercial airplane.
The crash did not damage any structures, and no one on the ground was injured, the sheriff’s office said.
Authorities are examining the aircraft’s final exchanges with an air traffic control tower before the crash. (FOX6 Milwaukee WITI)
The crash site remained secured Wednesday while investigators worked to reconstruct the events that led to the fatal flight.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) were notified and will oversee the investigation into the cause of the crash, according to the sheriff’s office.
