A 23-year-old woman was embarking on a new career as a tour guide with Adventure Airlines when her company's plane crashed near here, killing her and the seven others aboard.
Simone Unroe went to modeling school and worked as a lawyer's assistant before landing the job with the Las Vegas-based company, which specializes in air tours of the Grand Canyon."She was very adventurous and fun-loving," Alberta Unroe said of her daughter-in-law. "She loved dogs, she loved babies. She had an apple tree out here. It was one of the first things she wanted."
Simone Unroe moved to Las Vegas about a year ago with her husband, Michael Unroe, a Nellis Air Force Base senior airman. She was only on her second day of training as a tour guide when the crash occurred.
Saturday's crash of the twin-engine Cessna 421 also killed Adventure Airlines president Paul Bayer and two other employees, including pilot Billy Atkins.
The other victims were four employees of Japan Travel Bureau International. The firm is the New York subsidiary of JTB, which is Japan's biggest travel agency.
The pilot reported engine trouble before the plane spun sideways out of control and crashed about a mile north of the Mesquite airport while trying to make an emergency landing.
It had taken off from North Las Vegas a little more than an hour before and was headed for a business meeting at Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming.
Witnesses said the plane banked sharply over the Oasis hotel golf course, part of which borders the airport.
"It sounded like the engine stalled out," said Jon Rider, who was in the Oasis Golf Club parking lot when the plane went over. "I saw it go over and it came down pretty quick . . . It started banking and I heard no noise at all" when it crashed.
Tom Wilcox, the National Transportation Safety Board official in charge of the investigation, said one of the plane's two propellers apparently wasn't turning when the crash occurred.
But he warned against drawing any conclusions about the cause of the crash until the investigation is completed, a process that he said would take six months.
"Anybody that says (they know the cause of the crash) within six months, they don't know what the hell they're talking about," Wilcox said. "That's way too premature."
A Cessna 421 also crashed Saturday in Phoenix, killing the pilot and seriously injuring a person on the ground.