Santa Ana Woman Among 18 Killed in Minnesota Plane Crash
A Santa Ana woman was identified Friday as among the 18 people killed when a Northwest Airlines commuter plane crashed into a mountainside near Hibbing, Minn.
Rochelle Thacker, 47, was en route to her native Minnesota to arrange with her older brother and younger sister for the care of their hospitalized mother when the plane crashed Wednesday night.
“It’s an incredible shock,” said John Stevens, Thacker’s brother. “In a lot of ways the two of us, (my sister) Madeleine and myself, looked at Rochelle as a leader. She had a very strong personality with strong ideas and opinions.”
Thacker was director of personnel at Investors Diversified Services in Los Angeles and lived with her husband, Bruce, on Triumphal Way. Other Californians killed in the crash were 11-year-old Tony Trujillo of Palmdale and Theresa Hettinga, 59, of Modesto.
The Northwest Airlink plane, carrying 16 passengers and two crew members, was flying from Minneapolis about 200 miles north to Hibbing. The British Aerospace Jetstream 31 crashed into a huge mound of iron-ore waste after it struck a 30-foot-high evergreen tree.
The twin-engine turboprop was flying in fog and icy drizzle.
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