BOW, Wash. —
A twin-engine plane crashed Wednesday evening near the Skagit-Whatcom county line, killing the lone person on board, the Federal Aviation Administration reported. The plane, a Beech Baron, had taken off from Bellingham en route to Ogden, Utah, said FAA duty officer Mike O'Connor in Renton.
The aircraft lost radio and radar contact with the Seattle Air Route Traffic Control Center in Auburn shortly before the 6:45 p.m. crash, he said.
Seconds before the crash, Steve Bebich, who lives a quarter-mile from the crash scene, was making dinner when he heard a loud, high-pitched sound of an engine racing.
He didn’t even have time to run to the window before the plane crashed. “It was coming in at 150 mph, and it wasn't one or two seconds after that when I heard the concussion of it hitting," said Bebich.
O’Connor declined to say whether the victim was a man or a woman. The victim was not immediately identified.
Local authorities said the plane went down near the intersection of Chuckanut Drive and Sunset Road.
"It went pretty much straight into the ground," O'Connor said.
Skagit County Sheriff Chad Clark spoke to several witnesses. “The airplane was sputtering, flying low, doing acrobatics, whether it was flips or not, I'm not sure. But it was enough to be noticed by several witnesses in the area," said Clark.
The FAA had representatives at the crash scene Wednesday night. O'Connor said the National Transportation Safety Board would be at the scene Thursday morning to investigate the cause of the crash.
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