Small plane crashes in fog

MOUNT GILEAD, Ohio (AP) -- A small airplane trying to land in fog crashed Thursday near the county airport's runway, killing the two women and an 11-year-old girl aboard, authorities said.
"We believe the fog may have played a factor," said Lt. Robert Warner of the State Highway Patrol Mount Gilead Post.
Marilyn "Jean" Bible, 72, who lived just outside Marengo in north-central Ohio, rented the plane Thursday at the Morrow County Airport for a sightseeing trip to look at snow covering the ground from last week's storm, said the owner of the single-engine Cessna, Carl Fisher Jr.
Her passengers were Denise Sanderson, 48, from near Cardington; and Ashley Brown, 11, from the Richwood area in neighboring Union County, the patrol said. Investigators have not determined how the three knew each other, Warner said.
Disoriented by fog
Bible was not qualified to fly in bad weather, when pilots must navigate by instruments and not by sight, Fisher said.
The pilot apparently got disoriented when fog rolled in after takeoff, suddenly reducing visibility from 4 miles to less than a mile, he said. She turned the plane around soon after taking off but came in too fast.
Curtis Shoemaker of Round Rock, Texas, told The Marion Star that he saw the plane emerge from the clouds and smash into the snowy ground.
"It crushed and cartwheeled," he said.
The wreckage was found about 100 yards south of the runway, Warner said.
Fisher said he has been at the Morrow County Airport for 23 years, and Bible was taking lessons back then.