CLEVELAND (AP) — A next step in search efforts that resumed Monday in Lake Erie for a plane carrying six people that disappeared days ago will be bringing up debris spotted on the lake bottom.
Cleveland city officials said the large pieces of debris will be brought to the surface from an area searched Friday, though it remains unclear if the debris is from the corporate jet that vanished after takeoff from Burke Lakefront Airport on Dec. 29. They also didn’t give a timetable for the work.
The plane’s cockpit voice recorder and pieces of the aircraft’s tail also were found Friday, along with a seat that might have human remains. The six people who were aboard the plane are presumed dead.
A memorial service was scheduled Monday in Canfield, near Youngstown, for the plane’s pilot, Columbus business executive John T. Fleming, his wife, Sue, and their teenage sons, Jack and Andrew. A second memorial is planned Tuesday afternoon at Liberty Presbyterian Church in Delaware, north of Columbus.
They were returning to Columbus after making the trip to a Cleveland Cavaliers game with their neighbor, 50-year-old Brian Casey, and his 19-year-old daughter, University of Wisconsin-Madison nursing student Megan Casey.
A service to celebrate the Caseys’ lives is scheduled Sunday at Liberty Presbyterian, The Columbus Dispatch reported.
On Monday, a tugboat was being used to break up ice on the lake as divers resumed their search.
Transmissions from a locator beacon detector have helped narrow the search area, but divers have had to move slowly as they follow the signals because of extremely limited visibility. Officials have said they will continue to search until they’re confident they have found all they can.