Local News

BUTTE, Montana (CBS 5 / AP / BCN) ― Shredded metal, pieces of propeller and a seat cushion are among the few discernible items at the scene of a single-engine plane crash in Montana that killed all 14 people aboard, including five members of a prominent Napa Valley family.

Investigators said Tuesday that they were looking at the pilot's decision to divert his plane to the Butte airport shortly before it crashed Sunday as a potentially crucial factor in determining the cause.

Flying at 25,000 feet, pilot Buddy Summerfield requested the diversion from Bozeman to Butte just half an hour before the single-engine plane nose-dived into a cemetery at the edge of Butte's airport, according to National Transportation Safety Board acting Chairman Mark Rosenker.  

Federal officials on Tuesday also gave a few reporters and photographers the first close look at the cemetary where the Pilatus PC-12 went down.

Working among rows of granite headstones cordoned off by yellow police tape, investigators removed the last of the victims' luggage as they combed through the wreckage.

Small pieces of debris were picked up, logged and placed in plastic bags. The NTSB said it planned to clear away all the remaining wreckage once its search was completed.

The NTSB is investigating whether the 10-seat plane was overloaded and whether ice could have formed on the wings of the turboprop before it went down.

Regarding a possible cause for the crash, Rosenker said, "Nothing is off the table in this investigation but nothing leads us to anything specific."

"There are a number of things that could have created this sequence of events. We will look at all the probabilities and possibilities and then rule them out," he said.

The investigation has been hampered be the plane's lack of a cockpit voice recorder or data recorder. Rosenker said his agency might subpoena cell phone records of the crash victims to see if they could provide further clues.

Among the victims were the Jacobsons of St. Helena, Calif.

Every community has its star families. In the Napa County town of St. Helena, the Jacobsons were one of those.

Dr. Erin Jacobson, son of a prominent cardiac surgeon at St. Helena Hospital, was an ophthalmologist at the same hospital, and his mother Judy an active member of the Seventh Day Adventists' Pacific Union Church in nearby Angwin, where Erin and his wife Amy also worshipped with their three preschool children.

Erin and Amy Jacobson were the young, beautiful couple who always seemed happy as they ran errands, their tots ages four, three and one always skipping down Main Street.

Their lives revolved around family, work, friends, church. Erin and Amy had both spent their formative years in or near this internationally renowned wine town of 6,000. They attended Pacific Union College together and Loma Linda University, both Adventists' schools, where Erin received his medical degree and Amy her degree as a dental hygienist.

In 2004, when St. Helena Hospital recruited Erin to join its ophthalmology department, they told friends this is where they would start their family and stay for good.

Shock has numbed the town since Sunday's plane crash that killed the young family, including Amy's sister, Vanessa Pullen, on what was supposed to be a ski holiday to a Montana resort.

"It's an extreme shock," said Kerry Baldwin, 37, who attended high school and college with Erin and knew all of the adult victims of the single-engine crash.

He, like others, recalled Erin as a star student and athlete and preternaturally good-natured fellow.

"Erin was just an all-around good guy, a good-looking guy, very athletic and decent," he said.

At St. Helena Hospital, where a bulletin board was set up for colleagues to write tributes, there has been nothing close to a normal work routine. A steady stream of colleagues and former patients have made their way to the bulletin board to write notes, some leaving in tears.

"He was a great doctor," said Maria Ciudaj, a registered nurse in the emergency room. "He had a great bedside manner. Everybody's feeling it up there right now."

The hospital's former president, JoAline Olson, said she had recruited Erin based on his reputation and credentials.

"He had all the clinical knowledge that was needed, of course, his references were outstanding and it didn't hurt that we knew his wonderful parents. He turned out to be everything we wanted and then some," she said.

Erin Jacobson, who had donated time performing eye surgery in Haiti and the Dominican Republic, specialized in treating cataracts and glaucoma. Among the tributes to the family at the hospital was one from a patient that read "I will never forget you and your beautiful family you gave me my eyes. Love Caroline."

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