NTSB releases preliminary report in this month’s plane crash near Las Cruces

The NTSB has released the preliminary report on the fatal plane crash near Las Cruces on Aug. 14.

According to the report, the vintage T-28A Navy plane’s engine lost partial power about five minutes after leaving Las Cruces International Airport and the pilot tried to return back to the airport.

The pilot, 64-year-old David Tokoph of El Paso, then executed a forced landing into uneven terrain about 1-and-a-half mile before Runway 30 at the airport. The landing damaged both wings and the fuselage.

The pilot was airlifted to University Medical Center in El Paso where he died on Aug. 17. The passenger, Angelo Edgard Cossi Sedjiro from France, was seriously injured.

ABC-7 interviewed Tokoph back in 2009 when he broke a flying record.

He was part of a group of El Pasoans who traveled non-stop between Russia and El Paso – a journey of more than 5,400 miles.

“It is good for El Paso because as El Pasoans we naturally want to come to our hometown and we brought the only airplane to come non-stop from Russia – to our knowledge – in the history of aviation,” Tokoph told ABC-7 in 2009 after landing in El Paso.

There were two plane crashes in the Las Cruces area in 2014.

Tyler Francis, president of Francis Aviation, was killed in a plane crash at Las Cruces International Airport in late November.

Francis, 29, was the sole occupant of the single-engine plane that crashed at around noon on Nov. 24 about 150 feet from the terminal on the tarmac. Read the final NTSB report on Francis’ crash here.

In Aug. 2014, four people were killed in an air ambulance crash west of Las Cruces on Aug. 27. They died from a combination of burns, smoke inhalation and blunt force trauma, according to autopsy reports.

In 2012, a plane crashed or crash landed about two miles south of the Las Cruces airport.

The ABC-7 Investigative team learned the 2012 plane belonged to a Sean Tommervik from East Bridgewater, Massachussetts.