2 Seattleites Die As Festival-Goers See Plane Crash

MOUNT VERNON

Two Seattle men were killed when their plane crashed east of Mount Vernon shortly after 3 p.m. yesterday.

Pilot Shaun Berklbigler, 24, and passenger Mark Miller, 23, died in the impact and ensuing flames, police said.

Witnesses, who included hundreds of people attending the area's annual Tulip Festival, said the plane was flying low and slowly before it fell to the ground near Beaver Marsh Road, about two miles west of Mount Vernon.

The two men, believed to be on a sightseeing flight, had rented the Cessna 150 from a Paine Field flight service in Everett, the sheriff's department said. Investigators from the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board were on the scene early yesterday evening.

Meanwhile, Raymond George Schwartz, 46, of Renton, was killed yesterday when the single-engine plane he was piloting crashed near Moses Lake in Eastern Washington.

An official with Grant County Sheriff's office said a sheriff's deputy saw the plane start to climb and then nose down into the ground. It crashed near a road halfway between Moses Lake and the town of George.

The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating the cause.