Teen critical after Arkansas plane crash

SPRINGFIELD, Mo., June 27 (UPI) -- One of two survivors of a deadly crash of a small plane in rural Arkansas was in critical-but-stable condition Saturday, hospital officials in Missouri said.

Joshua Beckerle, 15, Eureka, Mo., was at St. John's Hospital in Springfield, Mo., after being pulled from the wreckage of a single-engine plane that went down the previous day after taking off from a resort in Baxter County, Ark.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported Beckerle's father, Eureka Alderman Donald Beckerle, 43, was treated and released.

Two of the three victims killed in the crash were classmates of Beckerle at St. Louis University High School. The other fatality was the pilot, who was the father of one of the teens who was killed.

The cause of the crash was under investigation.