Plane crash in Howard County kills 4

Authorities say four people are dead after the crash of a civilian airplane near the Howard County community of Umpire in southwest Arkansas.

Howard County Sheriff Butch Morris said the plane went down about 9:30 a.m. in a remote, wooded portion of the Howard County Wildlife Management Area, seven or eight miles southwest of Umpire.

Elizabeth Isham Cory, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration at Chicago, said the single-engine plane had taken off from DeQueen, about 35 miles southwest of Umpire, and was headed for an airport in north Arkansas or southern Missouri with four people on board. All four were killed, she said.

Deputies have blocked off a road leading from U.S. 278 to the crash site, several miles west of Umpire.

Morris said his office got a call from a woman who heard a plane fly over her house at a very low altitude, and then heard a “thud.”

The sheriff said the cause of the crash was still unknown. At the time the plane went down, he said, there was low cloud cover in the area.

Authorities said the plane was not searching for victims of the flood at Albert Pike Recreation Area.

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