Pasco Plane Crash Leaves One Dead In Central Florida [Video]

A Tennessee man piloting a small plane was killed this week when his aircraft went down near Tampa, Florida.

According to Tampa Bay Online, 59-year-old Harold Cameron MacManus was headed to Tennessee when his PA-28 single-propeller plane crashed near a wildlife preserve in Pasco County, Florida.

Fox News reports MacManus, a family doctor in his home state, took off from Tampa North Flight Center around 8:30 Sunday morning.

The wreckage of his plane was found Monday afternoon about 10 miles from the airport.

Following the crash, one of MacManus’ family members contacted the Federal Aviation Administration after they had not heard from the him after takeoff, the Pasco County sheriff’s office said.

MacManus was the brother of USF Political Science professor Susan MacManus, a well-known political analyst for ABC Action News and other media.

“He’s a beloved country doctor,” Susan MacManus told Bay News 9. “I think that says it all. People, his patients, he practices in a very poor part of Tennessee in the mountains and I can’t tell you how many times that patients would pay him with cakes or collard greens or some kind of food and he would just smile and say I’ve been looking forward to that all the time. I knew you would bring me something good. That was the kind of guy he was.”

Though authorities have yet to pinpoint the cause of the crash, it is believed poor weather could have been a factor.

“They were poor enough conditions where we canceled all of our flight lessons with our flight school that we have here at the airport,” said Keith Carver, a seasoned pilot who was at the airport when MacManus left.

“Everybody who is in the aviation industry realizes there is a certain risk to flying,” Carver added.

ABC has more on the tragic Pasco County, Florida plane crash in the video below: