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Coroner’s office says post-mortem for plane crash victims could take days

Nov 29, 2019 | 9:29 AM

KINGSTON, Ont. — The Ontario chief coroner’s office says it will perform post-mortem examinations in the coming days on the four adults and three children who died in a plane crash in Kingston, Ont., on Wednesday.

The Transportation Safety Board says the seven people died when a small, U.S.-registered airplane crashed in a wooded area within city limits around 5 p.m.

The cause of the crash is still under investigation, however local residents and police noted there was bad weather in the area at the time.

The TSB’S lead investigator says those conditions will be a part of the board’s probe.

Ken Webster says the plane had taken off from Buttonville municipal airport in Markham, Ont., and the pilot made contact with the Kingston airport just before the plane went down.

A spokeswoman for the coroner’s office says the victims’ names likely won’t be released for several days.

“The identities of the deceased persons will not be released to authorities until they have all been positively identified by scientific methods and next of kin have been notified,” issues manager Cheryl Mahyr said in a statement Friday.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 28, 2019.

The Canadian Press