Crash toll: musicians, veteran skydivers

The Daily Inter Lake

and The Associated Press

The body of the pilot of a skydiving plane that crashed Saturday was taken Monday to the state crime lab in Missoula for an autopsy.

The pilot - Troy Norling, 28, of Onalaska, Wis. - was one of five people who died Saturday morning in a crash at Skydive Lost Prairie's airfield just west of Marion. He had been working for Skydive Lost Prairie for 10 days.

Also killed in the crash were Joel Atkinson, 25, a parachute instructor from Kalispell; David Landeck Jr., a parachute instructor from Missoula; Jennifer Sengpiel, a parachute student from Great Falls; and Kyle Mills, a parachute student from Great Falls.

Atkinson is the son of Gail Ann Linne of Columbia Falls and Jim Atkinson of Kalispell. Funeral services are at 2 p.m. Thursday at Glacier Church, 690 Grandview Drive, Kalispell.

Joel Atkinson had been skydiving since he was 18 and had made 1,400 jumps. He had been working as a skydiving instructor at Lost Prairie and a delivery driver for Pizza Hut in Kalispell.

Sengpiel and Mills, both in their 20s, were members of the Great Falls Symphony and were engaged to be married at the end of the summer, The Associated Press reported.

The National Transportation Safety Board, the Federal Aviation Administration, Cessna Aircraft Co. and Teledyne Continental Motors Inc. are investigating the accident. The crashed plane was a Cessna 182-C, which had a Teledyne engine.

After a preliminary report this week, subsequent investigations, reviews and a conclusion by the transportation board are expected to take nine months.

Atkinson and Landeck were expert parachutists who were scheduled Saturday to tandem jump with the two student parachutists from Great Falls. In tandem jumping, a novice is connected to an expert parachutist and they skydive as a pair with one parachute.

Mills listed his summer address as Grand Rapids, Mich., and Sengpiel originally was from Richfield, Wis., but listed her summer address as Jackson, Wis., Symphony Executive Director Carolyn Valacich said in an interview with the Great Falls Tribune.

Valacich said the couple planned to leave Montana at the end of May so Mills could perform with the Calgary Philharmonic and Sengpiel could work on her doctorate in music.

"I'm assuming they just wanted to do one more wonderful thing in Montana," Valacich said.

On Saturday, the airplane lifted off from the northern end of Skydive Lost Prairie's hardtop runway and then immediately circled and appeared to be trying to land at the runway's southern end. The plane was about 500 feet high when it plummeted to the ground.

The plane crashed about 150 feet short of the runway. It burned on impact - destroying the wings and front and leaving a banged-up tail section.

Investigators have no preliminary idea why the crash occurred.