A Major General in the United States Air Force was killed Friday afternoon when a small plane crashed in the Williamsburg area.
WAVY, citing Virginia State Police, reported that Major General Joseph D. Brown IV, 54, had died in the crash. Virginia State Police spokeswoman Corinne Geller identified the female passenger as Brown's wife, Susan, according to the Associated Press. The couple's dog was also killed. There were no other passengers.
Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Kathleen Bergen described the plane as a Cessna 210 that went down about a half-mile from the Williamsburg/Jamestown airport in a subdivision. No injuries were reported on the ground.
"I was in my bedroom and heard a thud. One of neighbors came to my door. He asked if I had a fire extinguisher because a plane had just crashed by my house. That was the first I had heard of it," local resident Nancy Ward told WAVY. "We saw a plane that had apparently hit a tree right next to our driveway. It had gone straight down into the ground. There was no sign of life."
The plane's origination and destination, weren't immediately released. According to WAVY, there was no fire when it crashed.
Brown's official title was Major General of the Eisenhower School at Fort McNair in Washington, D.C. He had been in the Air Force since 1980, when he was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant after receiving his bachelor's degree from Virginia Military Institute, where he was in the ROTC program. According to his Air Force biography, Brown had logged more than 4,300 hours as a command pilot, primarily in B-1 and B-52 bombers. He had also served in Afghanistan and Iraq.
