people were killed when a crashed south of on July 10, 2026, according to Fox News, which reported the death toll as . Fox News and a Free Republic post reporting on the crash said emergency crews were dispatched at about :34 a.m. that Friday after reports of a possible aircraft crash. The event is still developing and the investigation is open.
The Monroe County Coroner's Office identified the victims as Jimmy Don Lewis, 48, the pilot, and his son Brayden Ty Lewis, 22, according to the reporting. The outlets reported the flight took off from St. Louis Regional Airport in Bethalto and was headed to Siloam Springs Municipal Airport in Arkansas, and that the pair were flying home from a St. Louis Cardinals baseball game. Search efforts were hampered for hours by low clouds, rain and poor visibility, the outlets reported, with a multi-agency response that included specialized drone teams from Illinois and the St. Louis region; an ARCH Air Medical helicopter located the wreckage at about 7:40 a.m. in a tree line near the Columbia Quarry. Kelsey Lewis said an apparent glitch in the aircraft's weather-tracking system left readings about 30 minutes off, according to both outlets.
The cause has not been determined. Accounts of the state of the inquiry differ. The Free Republic post reported that the Fox News reported that officials emphasized the findings released so far are and that the federal investigation remains ongoing, with the Federal Aviation Administration assuming responsibility for the crash scene while the NTSB and FAA continue to investigate the cause. The Monroe County Sheriff's Department, the Monroe County Coroner's Office, the FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board are named as involved by both outlets.
The aircraft is identified as in the NTSB's official case record for the accident, case WPR26FA254, matched on date and city. Aircraft registry records list as a Beech 95-B55 (T42A), a twin-engine piston landplane with CONT MOTOR I0-470 SERIES engines, serial number TC2152, registered in the United States. The registry lists the registered owner as W R Aviation Inc; the owner of record is not necessarily the operator, the pilot, or otherwise connected to the flight. No verifiable records could be located for an aviation organisation of that name near , and the only similarly named registrant found in FAA registration data mirrored by a third-party lookup site carries an address in Stigler, Oklahoma, which cannot be assumed to be the same organisation; nothing can be stated about its activity, base, certifications or officers.
As a matter of record, the NTSB database, which begins in 2008, contains 23 other cases involving the Beech 95-B55 (T42A), of which 5 involved a fatality. That count is not a safety rate and says nothing about the cause of this accident.
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