Father takes daughter on plane before crashing it

FEDERAL and state investigators were trying to determine yesterday why a man took his eight-year-old daughter up in a small plane and then crashed it into his former mother-in-law’s home, killing the little girl and himself.

Eric Johnson strapped his daughter, Emily, into the passenger seat of a leased, single-engine Cessna on Monday and took off from Virgil I Grissom Municipal Airport, police said. Moments later, the aircraft slammed into the side of Vivian Pace’s house in this southern Indiana city.

State and Bedford police were treating the criminal investigation as a suicide and homicide, State Police 1st Sergeant Dave Bursten said. No note of explanation had been found, he said.