A former professional baseball pitcher and three others were killed Friday morning when the small plane he was piloting crashed in the Utah mountains south of Salt Lake City, local authorities said.
Tyson Brummett, a 35-year-old player who appeared in a game for the Philadelphia Phillies, died along with his friend Alex Ruenger, 35, Ruegner’s aunt Elaine Blackhurst and her 62-year-old uncle. Douglas Blackhurst.
The plane crashed into the American Fork Canyon at a height of 8,500 feet, USA Today reported, and all four victims appeared to die on impact, according to the Utah County Sheriff’s Office.
A witness walking through the area said he saw the plane begin to turn before spiraling down, according to the sheriff’s office.
The cause of the accident has not yet been determined and will be investigated by the National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration.
Brummett took off from the South Valley Regional Airport in West Jordan, located about 24 miles from the crash site.
Selected in the Phillies’ fifth round in 2007, the right-handed reliever pitched professionally for eight seasons. He appeared in an MLB game, striking out two of the four hitters in the 2012 season finale against the Nationals.
Brummett spent the next two seasons within the Blue Jays and Dodgers minor league systems before Los Angeles released him in 2014.
The crash comes three years after former Phillies ace Roy Halladay died in his 40s while piloting a small plane off the Florida coast alone. Halladay, who was inducted into the Hall of Fame last summer, had high levels of amphetamine in his system and was doing extreme stunts when he lost control of the plane in 2017, the NTSB reported in April.
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