A pilot who volunteered to fly three rescue dogs to a facility crashed his plane in the mountains and died along with one of the pups.
Seuk Kim, 49, was operating a small plane from Maryland to Albany, New York, when the aircraft went down in the Catskill Mountains near the town of Windham shortly after 6pm on Sunday, according to the Greene County Sheriff’s Office.
On Monday, local authorities ‘discovered the wreckage of a single-engine Mooney M20 at Catskill State Park’ and ‘only the pilot was on board’, stated the Federal Aviation Administration.
Kim and one of the dogs were found dead at the scene, USA Today reported.
Another dog was found with two broken legs but alive, and the third dog was found later with minor injuries, the sheriff’s office wrote in an update on Facebook.
The dog with minor injuries was transported by Hyer Ground Rescue and Partners for Animal Welfare to a veterinarian.
Kim, of Springfield, Virginia, was extricated from the aircraft and his body was taken to Ellis Hospital for an autopsy.
His wife, Anna Kang, wrote on Facebook on Monday night that he was ‘my life long partner, my soul mate, father of my children’ and that she was ‘heart broken’.
‘My husband Seuk Kim gained his angel wings doing what he loved,’ she wrote.
‘Please pray for him, please pray for us.’
Kang shared a photo of her husband smiling widely inside an airplane.
A donation page for Kim’s funeral services and his family stated that this children are aged 13, 14 and 16.
The animal rescue group SFC (Squishy Face Crew) Virginia, which had handed the three dogs to Kim, stated that the community ‘has lost an amazing one’.
“As always, Seuk was upbeat, smiling, and happy – we never once saw him in a bad mood!”
More than $44,000 had been donated as of Tuesday night.
‘We will miss him dearly,’ wrote Kang, ‘And he will forever hold a special place in our hearts.’
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
For more stories like this, check our news page.
