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Title: 3 Killed in Wisconsin Plane Crash From Time to Time: Nando's in-depth look at the 20th century

The Associated Press

CORNELL, Wis. (May 2, 2000 8:46 p.m. EDT http://www.nandotimes.com) - A small plane that had been giving rides to grade-school students on a field trip Tuesday crashed shortly after taking off on a final flight. A teacher, a parent and the pilot were killed.

The single-engine airplane went down near the airport in Cornell, a city of 1,500 in northwestern Wisconsin.

The 14 students from Our Lady of Sorrows Elementary School in Ladysmith were playing kickball beside the airport's main building before having lunch and never directly saw the crash, but they heard it and saw the fiery aftermath.

Ten of the students had taken rides on the plane, said 10-year-old Kirk Groves, a fourth-grader who had gone on the third flight of the day - the one right before the crash.

"Some of my other friends, if their mom and dad would have let them go up in that plane, they would probably be dead," he said.

The Chippewa County Sheriff's Department identified the victims as pilot Arthur P. Bresina, 20, teacher Peter J. Krajawski, 26, and parent Deborah M. Bates, 32.

Kirk said he heard the plane's engine go out and saw the flames after the plane hit the ground.

"It was really scary," he said. "Then the people, they made us go into a room at the airport and they didn't tell us anything about it. We ate our hot dogs and took a bus back to Ladysmith and then we got the news that everybody in the plane had died."

Kirk Groves' father, the Rev. George Groves, attended the meeting.

"The whole classroom broke down. Lots of moms and dads were there hugging their kids. We were just kind of all loving on each other and thinking, `It could have been our kids,"' said Groves, pastor of Faith United Methodist Church in Ladysmith.

The plane was a 1973 four-seater Cessna 172, according to the Federal Aviation Administration, which was investigating.

http://www.nandotimes.com/noframes/story/0,2107,500199520-500274666-501452277-0,00.html

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-- (Dee360Degree@aol.com), May 02, 2000