Plane Crash Claims The Life Of Father, Son

A St. Louis father and his adult son lost their lives when their single-engine Cessna airplane crashed in the eastern portion of Grundy County on Monday.

According to Grundy County Coroner Dewayne Slater, the bodies of 85-year-old Philip Lefevre of St. Louis and his 47-year-old son, Philip Lefevre, Jr., of Sunset Hills were found at the crash site. Slater said he doesn’t know who was piloting the plane, which is something that will be determined by investigators from the Federal Aviation Administration.
The two men were reportedly enroute from Moberly to Kirksville when the plane crashed. According to the FAA’s preliminary crash report, the single-engine Cessna177RG had attempted an emergency landing and struck a tree in a field near the intersection of Highway 6 and Highway 139 North in the far eastern portion of the county. The website Flightaware.com shows that the plane, owned by Aircraft Partners LLC, took off from the St. Louis Downtown airport (Cahokia/St. Louis) at 10:51 a.m. on Monday and had last been seen at 11:57 a.m. when it landed as scheduled at Moberly. The Grundy County Sheriff’s Department had been contacted Tuesday morning to assist the Sullivan County Sheriff’s Department regarding the missing aircraft, which had last known to be north of Humphreys in Sullivan County heading southwest around 3 p.m. on Monday. The wreckage of the fixed-wing four-seat plane was located Tuesday afternoon in a secluded wooded area.
The weather conditions on Monday were very poor, with snow and bitter cold temperatures. Robert Katz, who has 40 years of experience as a commercial pilot and has served as a flight instructor since 1989, said it would have been a treacherous and dangerous day for anyone to be flying in a small plane such as the one used by the Lefevres. Katz said weather stations had been reporting icing conditions across north Missouri on Monday and the plane did not have deicing equipment. It had been reported that a private plane had to make a landing at the Trenton Municipal Airport earlier this week due to icing on its wings. That plane had been enroute to Minnesota.
Katz also noted the age of the plane, which went into service in 1971. According to Flightaware, the plane had made trips from St. Louis to Omaha, NE and Branson in recent days. He said accidents such as these are not uncommon and pose a risk to not only the pilot and the passengers, but also those on the ground who may be in the line of wreckage. Fortunately, with the crash occurring in a secluded area, no other injuries or property damage was reported.
The sheriff’s office will continue to assist the National Transportation Safety Board and the FAA until the conclusion of their investigation.
Those assisting with the search included the Galt Fire Protection District, the Grundy County Rural Fire Protection District as well as the Missouri State Highway Patrol.