Wright County plane crash: From wedding plans to two funerals

Six days from Jeff Colbenson's wedding, his family is now preparing for his funeral.

Colbenson, 34, of Maple Lake, and friend Brett Johnson, 32, of Becker, died Sunday after the plane Johnson was piloting crashed into a wooded marsh near Clearwater, 12 miles south of St. Cloud in Wright County.

The plane lost power while Johnson was doing aerobatics in front of Colbenson's friends and family.

"We're a mess," Jeff's mother, Gloria Colbenson, said Monday.

On Sunday she was inside her Monticello home waiting to hear the plane overhead when instead she got a phone call later that her youngest son had died.

"It's a phone call you think you'll never receive," she said, adding that she wasn't keen on her son going up in the plane so close to his wedding. "I didn't feel right about it."

But citing the nice weather, the two friends since high school took off from nearby Clear Lake in the Christen Eagle II biplane. Witnesses saw the aerobatic sport plane doing tricks and stunts just minutes before it went down around 12:40 p.m.

Still, a "handful" of aerobatic-related fatalities occur each year, he said.

"There's an increased amount of risk in that," Knapinski said. "But people who get into that typically understand that risk."

The incident is under investigation by the Federal Aviation Administration, the Wright County coroner's and sheriff's offices and the National Transportation Safety Board.

Witnesses to Sunday's crash said Johnson appeared to know what he was doing but lost control during one of the stunt maneuvers.

Pilot was 'extremely cautious'

"He loved this," he said. "He'd been flying all his life. He was extremely cautious."

Johnson and his wife, Erica, were supposed to spend Monday celebrating their son Alec's six-month birthday. They also were planning to attend Colbenson's wedding on Saturday.

Before the crash, Colbenson's fiancée, Beth Blizil, a school district clerk and volunteer firefighter, was making final wedding preparations at her parents' Maple Lake home, where the ceremony was to take place. The couple has a 2-year-old son, Carter.

"The whole family is having such a hard time with this," said Fire Chief Todd Borell, who's long worked with Blizil, her father, brother and cousin in the department. "It's hit pretty close to home for all of us."