Officials share more details regarding fatal Rusk County plane crash

Updated: Feb. 1, 2017 at 6:27 PM CST
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RUSK COUNTY, TX (KLTV) - Investigators are going through the charred wreckage of a plane crash that claimed the life of its pilot.

Just after 3:30 Tuesday afternoon, officials say the Cessna Cardinal 177 came crashing down near County Road 497, bursting into flames just west
of Henderson, in the community of Price.

The pilot is identified as 25-year-old Cody Stewart of Oklahoma. Investigators are trying to figure out what led to his impact of the guy wires of a cell phone tower.

FAA and DPS investigators were on scene, going through the broken and burned pieces of the aircraft to determine what happened.
 
"We've got information, we believe we know what it is, but we haven't found the serial number plate to positively identify the aircraft," said Rusk County Sheriff Jeff Price.

It was a commercial aircraft, actually making aerial passes.
 
"It was a company aircraft that flies pipelines and high-lines," Price says.
 
"We get a call for an explosion. We discovered there was an aircraft down, and that changed the whole game. With a situation like that, you don't know what's going to happen next," says Carlisle VFD Fire Captain Joseph Avalos.

Authorities say the plane appears to have clipped a guy wire on the tower, which, depending on impact, would have brought it down. What investigators are looking into now is the flight-path, to find out how it happened that the aircraft got so close, to be able to clip the wires of the tower.  Stewart died in the crash.

Investigators say it's possible Stewart may have missed seeing the tower while he was checking ground level.

"We've got theories, but we don't have anything concrete at this point," says Price.

The pilot's body has been transported to Southwest Forensics Science Center in Tyler for an autopsy. 
 
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