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Hawaii native badly burned in plane crash near Las Vegas

Leila Fujimori

Hawaii native Thomas William Craig VIII was severely burned after the plane he was piloting crashed Saturday near Las Vegas, killing two and injuring two others.

A single-engine Beechcraft Sierra plane with four people on board had a mechanical issue after takeoff from the Henderson Executive Airport and turned around in an attempt to land. The plane crashed and caught fire in a desert area just south of the airport, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.

Craig, a San Diego resident, suffered second- and third-degree burns covering nearly 75 percent of his body, a GoFundMe page says. A Good Samaritan angel helped him as he stumbled from the wreckage it said.

Passenger Lorenzo Harris, 48, of California, who died, was identified by the coroner’s office, but the other passenger who died and the other injured have not been identified, the newspaper said.

Archived audio of radio traffic between the plane and the airport’s control tower indicated the plane requested to turn around and re-land as a door was open midflight, the air traffic website LiveATC.net, the paper reported.

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