Five members of a pickleball club in Texas died Thursday night when the Cessna 421C plane they were on crashed.
The plane crashed in Wimberley, Texas, 47 miles northeast of San Antonio at around 11:25 p.m. local time Thursday, the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement.
The victims were Brooke Skypala, Glen Appling, Hayden Dillard, Seren Wilson and Stacy Hedrick, per a Facebook post from the Amarillo Pickleball Club, which they were members of. The club, based in Amarillo, Texas, 334 miles northwest of Dallas, said they were on their way to a pickleball tournament.
Officials have not specified which of the victims was flying the plane, which caught fire after hitting the ground.
“The pilot and four passengers on board were pronounced deceased on scene. The plane did catch fire. That would indicate some pretty severe damage to the plane,” Texas Department of Public Safety Sgt. Billy Ray told KXII-TV.
Stacy Rohr, a nearby resident who did not realize the incident was a plane crash until the next day, told the Austin American-Statesman that she heard the sound and “was like, ’What in the world is that?’ So I sprang up, came out, and looked over, and it looked like the back of my house was all in flames.”
The FAA did not say what caused the plane to crash and said that further investigation will be headed by the National Transportation Safety Board.
At the time of the crash, the victims were headed for New Braunfels, Texas, 20 miles south of Wimberley, according to KXII-TV.
They were due to compete in a tournament hosted at the Cranky Pickle, a sports complex in New Braunfels.
Martin Robertson, the main professional at the complex, told The Associated Press that “we’re very heavy hearted, heartbroken from this. The pickleball community is very tight knit. Everybody knows everybody.”
Amarillo Pickleball Club President Dan Dyer told the AP that he had personally played with four of the victims and that they “were excellent players. They were out to win some games.”
