Looking Back: Knife fight in Burley; 5 people die in two plane crashes

MORELAND — Five people were dead after two separate plane crashes near American Falls and Moreland, the Idaho State Journal reported on Aug. 29, 1976.

A single-engine plane crashed and burned seven miles northwest of American Falls. Power County coroner Bud Kelly said the pilot Dick Baker, of Alaska, and his three passengers Bob, Judy and Marvin Baker, all of whom were from Emmett, Idaho, were killed.

Brothers Dick and Bob, along with Bob’s wife Judy and their young son Marvin were flying from Emmett to Preston for their father’s funeral.

Mechanical problems apparently forced Dick to land in a field. After fixing the problem, Dick moved the plane onto a roadway for takeoff but failed to clear high-voltage power lines along the road, according to Stacy Nelson, a witness who told the Journal.

Nelson said the plane touched one line causing it to make a sharp turn that barely missed hitting a nearby house. As the plane was pulling out of that turn, it clipped the top wire on another pole.

The tail and landing gear hit the hot wire and the plane immediately burst into a “ball of flames” and crashed to the ground. The four “badly charred bodies” could not be recovered for more than an hour.

Shortly after that plane crash, another plane went down. Dean Parks, a Blackfoot farmer, was a passenger on the plane. He was killed after the twin-engine plane crashed into a grain field one mile northwest of Moreland, Idaho. He was transported to the hospital where he died shortly after.

The pilot and owner of the plane, Ron Blair, of Taber, Idaho, was taken to a hospital where he was recovering from leg injuries. Two other passengers, Raymond Parks, Dean’s brother, and John Chidester, a Blackfoot real estate agent, were treated and released from a local hospital.

Blair said the left engine stopped running and the other engine wasn’t enough to hold the plane in the air. The plane was flying to Blackfoot when it fell to the ground, skidded and finally stopped in a small ditch.

The Federal Aviation Administration was investigating both plane crashes.

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