VERO BEACH — National Transportation Safety Board officials on Monday identified the instructor and student pilot involved in Friday’s Vero Beach plane crash as James K. Ross and Avinash Kumar.
Ross, an instructor for Paris Air flight school who was piloting the plane, was released from Lawnwood Regional Medical Center in Fort Pierce Monday morning. He sustained two broken wrists in the crassh. Kumar, the student pilot and sitting in the passenger seat, is in stable condition at Holmes Regional Medical Center in Melbourne. He suffered a leg injury.
The crash happened Friday when the flight instructor and student were working on touch and go landings in a 1979 Piper Seneca and ran into trouble forcing the crash landing about a mile from the Vero Beach airport.
The instructor and student were trapped in the plane for over an hour, but were conscious and talking during the extrication at a home in the Sun Villas neighborhood near 12th Street and 34th Avenue. Indian River County Sheriff’s spokesman Deputy Jeff Luther said Monday the plane had been removed from the scene Sunday by a salvage company.
National Transportation Safety Board investigator Butch Wilson said the investigation into the cause of the crash is ongoing and he has yet to talk to either Ross or Kumar. Wilson said he expects to have a preliminary report out sometime this week.
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