Plane crash kills five pickleball club members in Texas
A Cessna airplane carrying four members of the Amarillo Pickleball Club and a pilot crashed Thursday night in Wimberley, Texas, killing everyone on board. The single-engine plane went down in a wooded area on Round Rock Road at 11 p.m., about 40 miles southwest of Austin. Local police Sgt. Billy Ray said the pilot and four passengers were pronounced dead at the scene.
The victims were traveling to a pickleball tournament when the crash occurred. The Amarillo Pickleball Club confirmed the four passengers were members, and club president Dan Dyer said he had played many games with them. "I’ve handed them medals. They were excellent players. They were out to win some games," Dyer said. "Every weekend there are dozens of tournaments. Some people get the bug; others don’t. But once they do, they’ll travel for a tournament."
Federal authorities are leading the investigation. The plane's locator emergency device emitted a distress signal before the crash. A second plane from Amarillo bound for the same tournament landed safely at the airport in New Braunfels, about 30 miles northeast of San Antonio.
Weather conditions included mostly cloudy skies in the area shortly before the incident, with a thunderstorm arriving two hours later, according to the National Weather Service. Wimberley, population about 3,000, lies in the Texas Hill Country, a region known for tourism along with nearby New Braunfels, population about 116,000.