{"id":30945,"date":"2023-03-08T12:45:33","date_gmt":"2023-03-08T17:45:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=30945"},"modified":"2023-03-08T12:45:38","modified_gmt":"2023-03-08T17:45:38","slug":"all-persons-identified-in-the-deadly-plane-collision-over-lake-hartridge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2023\/03\/08\/all-persons-identified-in-the-deadly-plane-collision-over-lake-hartridge\/","title":{"rendered":"All persons identified in the deadly plane collision over Lake Hartridge"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A day after two small planes collided over Lake Hartridge in Winter Haven, the Polk County Sheriff’s Office said late Wednesday morning it has identified the fourth person killed in the tragic accident.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Sheriff’s Office said Louis C. Defazio, 78, of Fredericksburg, Texas, and a partial resident of Winter Haven, was the fourth person killed in the collision. He was riding in the Piper J-3 Cub sea plane, operating out of Jack Brown’s Seaplane Base in Winter Haven with Randall Elbert Crawford, 67, of Carlisle, Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Faith Irene Baker, 24, of Winter Haven, a pilot and flight instructor with Sunrise Aviation; and Zachary Jean Mace, 19, of Winter Haven, a student at Polk State College, were in a Cherokee Piper 161 fixed-wing plane operated was by Sunrise Aviation our of Ormond Beach on behalf of Polk State College.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to the Sheriff’s Office, these four people were the only occupants of the planes that collided about 2 p.m. Tuesday. Winter Haven police and fire departments, the Polk County Sheriff’s Office and Fire Rescue, and Dundee Fire Department responded to the crash. Tuesday afternoon, the investigation and was turned over to the Sheriff’s Office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PSCO Chief of Staff Steve Lester told reporters Tuesday evening that rescuers found one of the plane’s occupants and attempted CPR, but life-saving measures were unsuccessful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A dive team went on the lake around 4:35 p.m. One partially submerged plane’s wingtip could be seen from the lake shorefront. Lester said the second plane was about 21 feet underwater.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lake Hartridge is a 437-acre lake located just south of the U.S. 92 and U.S 17 junction and just east of the Winter Haven Regional Airport. Only 21st Street Northwest separates the airport from the lake. The rest of the lake’s shoreline is heavily populated by homes, apartments and businesses. Havendale Boulevard is just south of the lake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s also part of the Winter Haven Chain of Lakes, connecting to Lake Conine to the northeast and Lake Idylwild to the southwest. In a news release Tuesday night, the PCSO asked boaters to stay out of the area of Lake Hartridge while the investigation continued.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Wednesday morning, the PCSO said the planes remained in the water but were expected to be recovered Wednesday by a contractor working for the National Transportation Safety Board.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Sheriff’s Office did not offer details on the cause of the crash, saying the NTSB and the Federal Aviation Administration were expected to conduct their own investigations into the causes and circumstances.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A day after two small planes collided over Lake Hartridge in Winter Haven, the Polk County Sheriff’s Office said late Wednesday morning it has identified the fourth person killed in… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":30933,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"0","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[14],"tags":[4715],"class_list":["post-30945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-all-persons-identified-in-the-deadly-plane-collision-over-lake-hartridge"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30945"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30945\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}