Craig Eady has died from injuries sustained in a California plane crash that already killed his wife and two youngest sons.
The 44-year-old Auberry man passed away in hospital Monday, leaving Lucien, 17, and Felicity, 18, orphaned after the weekend tragedy near Fresno. His death comes just days after flight instructor Danna Eady, 41, and their sons Pavel, 10, and Remus, 13, perished when their aircraft went down.
The crash occurred close to Sierra Sky Park airport near the San Joaquin River just before 2 p.m. Saturday. Emergency crews including firefighters, cops and sheriff’s deputies scrambled to the scene.
They arrived to find plane wreckage on a bluff near the river as flames tore across a nearby hillside. The aircraft was a fixed-wing, single-engine plane.
Craig Eady had survived the initial impact but succumbed to his injuries Monday, raising the death toll to four from the same family. The couple’s two eldest children were not aboard the aircraft.
The Eady family lived in Auberry, a small community in Fresno County. Danna Eady worked as a flight instructor, a detail that adds a bitter layer to the aviation disaster that claimed her life along with those of two of her children.
The crash site near Sierra Sky Park airport drew a multi-agency response as crews contended with both the wreckage and the fire spreading across the hillside. The San Joaquin River runs through the area where the plane came down on the bluff.
Authorities have not released details on what caused the single-engine aircraft to go down or whether the family was on a training flight, recreational outing or other purpose. The National Transportation Safety Board typically investigates fatal general aviation crashes.
The surviving siblings now face the devastation of losing their entire immediate family in a matter of days. No information has been made public about extended family members or arrangements for the teenagers.
The Fresno County area has seen small aircraft incidents before given the concentration of general aviation activity around Sierra Sky Park, a residential airpark community where homes line taxiways.