CASTLE
ROCK - Denver car dealer Kent Rickenbaugh, his wife,
Caroline, and their son Bart were killed Sunday in a
plane crash near Centennial Airport. Pilot Dr. Steven
Mostow also died.
Kent Rickenbaugh, 64, owned two
car dealerships in the Denver area. Caroline
Rickenbaugh, 62, was known for her involvement in the
community. Bart Rickenbaugh, 35, lived in Bozeman, Mont.
Mostow, 63, was one of the country's leading
infectious disease experts and was associate dean at the
University of Colorado Health Sciences
Center.
Mostow was a crusader for better health,
an early advocate for widespread flu vaccinations and
more recently an expert on the threat of bioterrorism.
He was a champion for rural health care and childhood
immunizations. For the past three years, he had been
helping to expand the 9Health Fair, a program that
benefits thousands of people in
Colorado.
Investigators returned to the scene of
the plane crash Monday to try to figure out why the
twin-engine Cessna 340 went down.
The plane was
headed to Centennial from Gunnison when Mostow reported
engine trouble around 4:30 p.m., Federal Aviation
Administration spokesman Jerry Snyder said.
The
plane crashed near mile marker 190 in unincorporated
Douglas County.
Witnesses say they saw the plane
go down. "As we came over the hill we saw the plane
coming fairly straight toward the highway actually, and
swerving from side to side, losing altitude fast,"
Willen Guyer said. "I think the guy saw the highway and
turned away from it and when he turned left he just went
nose down into the ground."
The weather was
cloudy with snow flurries; however, National
Transportation Safety Board investigators said weather
did not appear to be a factor in the crash, Douglas
County Sheriff's Office spokesman Bernie Harris
said.
Click here for video of the plane
crash
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