Police in Nashville have identified the five victims of a fatal small plane crash earlier this week as the pilot, his wife and their three young children.
The Metropolitan Nashville Police Department says Victor Dotsenko, 43, his wife, Rimma, 39, and their children, David, 12, Adam, 10, and Emma, 7, were killed in the accident along Interstate 40 on Monday. The family is from King Township in Ontario, Canada.
"On behalf of King Township, I extend our deepest condolences to the families and friends of the Dotsenko family from our community who tragically lost their lives in the small plane crash in Nashville, Tennessee," the city’s mayor, Steve Pellegrini, said in a post on X. "This is a heartbreaking and devastating loss for our tight-knit community."
Audio recordings that surfaced in the wake of the crash captured Victor Dotsenko telling an air traffic controller, "I’m going to be landing, I don’t know where," in the moments before impact.
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The Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board are now investigating what caused the aircraft – referred to in radio recordings as a Piper PA-32R – to plunge out of the sky on Monday night.
Metro Nashville Police spokesperson Don Aaron said the control tower at John C. Tune Airport received a message at about 7:40 p.m. from an aircraft reporting that it was experiencing engine and power failure and needed emergency approval to land.
"Nashville, I’m declaring an emergency. My engine shut down," Dotsenko could be heard saying in an audio recording obtained by WYMT.
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"Are you trying to land at John Tune?" the air traffic controller asked.
"My engine turned off. I’m at 1,600. I’m going to be landing, I don’t know where," the pilot responded.
In the recordings, Dotsenko also said he had the runway of the airport in sight, but declared, "I’m too far away, I won’t make it."
The single-engine plane ultimately crashed near mile marker 202 along Interstate 40 eastbound in West Nashville, a neighborhood about three miles from the airport.
The flight originated in Ontario and made stops along the way that were likely to gas up, including in Erie, Pennsylvania, and Mount Sterling, Kentucky, National Transportation Safety Board investigator Aaron McCarter said Tuesday. Before the pilot radioed in the emergency, the plane had been on a normal flight track with no mechanical irregularities reported while it flew in from the Kentucky airport, McCarter added.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
