ASHEVILLE, N.C., May 13 (UPI) -- Searchers found a small plane piloted by a Baptist minister Tuesday and the bodies of the pastor and his 13-year-old son in the mountains of North Carolina.
The Rev. Forrest Pollock, pastor of the Bell Shoals Baptist Church in Brandon, Fla., was believed to have crashed Monday, the Asheville (N.C.) Citizen-Times reported. He took off from Rutherfordton, N.C., at 5 a.m. Monday, planning to pick up a friend in Little Rock, Ark., and fly to a conference in Texas.
The Civil Air Patrol spotted the Piper PA-32-260 from the air at about 9:30 a.m. Tuesday on top of a ridge accessible only on foot. A search party got there a few hours later.
The National Transportation Safety Board was to investigate the crash. Winds were high in the area Monday.
Pollock was well-known in the Tampa area as the pastor of a church with 3,000 members and was prominent in the Southern Baptist Convention. He was scheduled to be a speaker at the church's annual conference next month in Indianapolis.
A church spokesman said that he flew to North Carolina on Sunday to visit his mother on Mother's Day.
