Three men and three young children have died after a light plane slammed into a sheer cliff in the Superstition Mountains in the US state of Arizona.

A former caretaker convicted of murdering six people and attacking 19 others will meet his fate in the coming weeks as jurors consider whether to put him to death for dozens of random night-time shootings that terrorised the desert city of Phoenix, Arizona, over a 14-month period in 2005 and 2006.

AUTHORITIES arrested two men yesterday in their investigation of a series of shootings that have terrorised people in the Phoenix area.