7 killed in Downstate plane crash after NCAA Championship

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. — A private plane returning from the NCAA basketball tournament in Indianapolis crashed in a central Illinois field on Tuesday, killing all seven people on board, including Illinois State University’s associate head basketball coach and a deputy athletics director.

Rescue personnel found no survivors at the site near the city of Bloomington, and the McLean County coroner’s office pronounced the seven occupants dead, McLean County Sheriff Jon Sandage said at a news conference.

The coroner’s office identified the other five people aboard as pilot Thomas Hileman, 51, of Bloomington; Andrew Butler, 40, of Normal; Woodrow “Jason” Jones, 45, and Terry Stratlow, 64, both of Bloomington; and Scott Bittner, 42, of Towanda.

Illinois State University President Larry Dietz confirmed in an email to students, faculty and staff that associate head basketball coach Torrey Ward and Aaron Leetch, the athletic department’s deputy director for external relations, were killed in the early-morning crash. The email was released to media.

“Words cannot fully express the grief that is felt in the wake of such a tragedy,” Dietz wrote, adding that both men were well-respected and much-loved in the athletics department. “We move between shock and profound sadness.”

Several players and staff carried through with an optional practice Tuesday afternoon at Redbird Arena. A spokesman said they would not make players or coaches available for comment.

The journey to Monday night’s championship game began with a phone call. Bittner, a 42-year-old business owner, got a call from a friend asking if he wanted to go to the game.

“He said he had an extra ticket and asked him to go,” said Terry Wertz, who worked alongside Bittner at a meat processing plant. Wertz said that when Bittner hung up the phone he was “really excited.”

They took off for the game in a plane that Bittner used regularly for business trips. It was not clear exactly how they were connected with the others on board, but local broadcasters talked about the group as if many of them were well acquainted with one another.

The Cessna 414 twin-engine aircraft took off from Indianapolis and crashed just short of the Central Illinois Regional Airport in Bloomington after midnight, the Federal Aviation Administration said.

The National Transportation Safety Board was investigating, but there was no initial word on the cause of the crash. News photos from near the scene showed dense fog.

The airport was open and all systems, including its runway lighting, were functioning, though the tower had closed several hours earlier and handed responsibility to an air traffic control facility in Peoria.

“That is not an anomaly; that’s a very common thing at airports across the country,” airport Director Carl Olson told reporters at the news conference.

Radar contact was lost moments before the crash and a search was launched when the pilot failed to close out his flight plan. It took about three hours to find the wreckage.

Jones, a former basketball and baseball player for Illinois Wesleyan University, worked at Wells Fargo Advisors, said his wife, Lyndsey Jones. “He loved his children and his family more than anything in the world, wonderful man. That’s really all I can say right now,” she said.

Bittner’s father-in-law, Scott Barrows, said he had a regular and experienced pilot for the 10-seater aircraft.

They “went to the NCAA game last night and they were flying back and I guess the weather was bad in central Illinois. It was foggy,” Barrows told the Chicago Tribune. “They were supposed to land around midnight. My daughter was called at 4 a.m. … It has been confirmed they are dead.”

A woman who answered a phone listing for Scott Bittner said she was a family friend and declined to comment beyond asking for privacy.

Bittner lived with his wife and two children in Towanda, a small village just outside Bloomington, his co-worker Wertz told the AP. He owned a meat processing plant in Eureka, Illinois, carrying on the family’s line of work after his dad established another plant in the small city of Chenoa, where Bittner grew up.

“He always told me that he wasn’t my boss, that I didn’t work for him, I worked with him,” said Wertz, who has worked at Bittner’s Meat Co. for 15 years.

“He was awful good to me and my family,” Wertz said through tears. “If I needed anything, he’d do anything for you.”

The plant butchers livestock, including beef, pork, lambs and goats.

Bittner had traveled to Indianapolis for the NCAA tournament using his dad’s plane, which he primarily used for business trips, Wertz said.

The aircraft was registered to Make it Happen Aviation LLC of Towanda, Illinois.

NTSB investigator Todd Fox said the plane was cleared to land in fog and rain but appears to have made a turn away from approaching the runway before crashing. It isn’t clear why, he said.

Fox said he doesn’t know if the plane was having problems or the pilot radioed in distress. Its engines caught fire on impact, Fox said.

The pilot had flown about 12,000 hours and held an air transport license, which allows a pilot to fly commercial airliners, Fox said. He said the full NTSB investigation is expected to take a year to 18 months.

BY DAVID MERCER and JASON KEYSER, Associated Press

Keyser reported from Chicago; AP writer Don Babwin contributed to this report from Chicago; Sun-Times Media Wire