Investigators have identified the pilot of a small plane that crashed in rural Wisconsin, killing all six aboard after he reported icing and the aircraft plunged from high altitude.

Ronald Riek, a 63-year-old businessman from Woodville, was at the controls of the single-engine Piper PA-46 when it went down Tuesday evening in a wooded area near a residential neighborhood in Dellona, Daily Mail reported.

Four other adults and a child also died at the scene. No one on the ground was hurt, and nearby homes were not damaged.

The flight left Kenosha Regional Airport just before 9 p.m., headed toward Menomonie. About a half-hour later, the plane crashed. The National Transportation Safety Board is leading the investigation, with the Federal Aviation Administration assisting.

Icing call came before the plunge

NTSB officials said Riek reported icing and asked to descend from 24,000 feet. The Sauk County Sheriff’s Office said the aircraft was in contact with a nearby air traffic control tower moments before impact.

Fox News reported that flight data showed a sharp descending right turn, with descent rates reaching 4,000 feet per minute and airspeed nearly doubling to 340 mph before the crash near Mirror Lake State Park in Sauk County.

Aviation safety expert Jeff Guzzetti, a former investigator for both the NTSB and FAA, pointed to weather as the central problem.

"It has all the earmarks of an icing-related loss of control."

Daniel Johnson, chairman of the Menomonie Airport Commission, told a Wednesday meeting the plane encountered a thunderstorm just before the crash. He also noted the aircraft type “has a reputation of not doing well in thunderstorms.” Investigators are examining whether weather played a role.

Fatal small-plane accidents keep drawing the same hard questions about weather, equipment, and decision-making, including cases like a Florida family of four found dead after a private plane crash near the Bahamas.

Locals heard the wreck before crews arrived

Residents were already searching the area when officials reached the scene. An officer on a police scanner described what he found in plain terms.

"I've got, uh, looks like, definitely an airplane seat of some sort with deceased in the front yard."

A local woman who heard the crash told News 3 Now the noise stuck with her.

"It's a sound that you won't get out of your head."

The violence of sudden aviation losses is familiar to readers who followed the medical plane that vanished off Nantucket after a pilot’s ‘coming in blind’ call, another case with six lives on the line.

Riek built a business and logged serious flight time

Johnson described Riek as “simply a good man” and “a highly experienced pilot.” At a Wednesday meeting that included a moment of silence, he added more.

"He's been an active, enthusiastic local pilot. He was a businessman from Woodville, who had a very active warehousing business that was attractive and successful."

FAA records, cited through Associated Press reporting, show Riek had at least 1,500 hours of flying experience and held an airline transport pilot rating on his license.

He founded Woodville Logistics in 1994. The company grew into three locations, six buildings, and a 700,000-square-foot warehousing center for dry and frozen goods. The company website said flying was part of how he worked.

"Along with working in the business, Ron is an experienced pilot and loves taking to the skies to meet both current and potential new customers."

The same site said his love of flying passed to his son Reuben, who recently obtained his pilot’s license. Riek leaves behind his wife, Lorri, son Reuben, and daughter Rebecca Riek. The other five people on the plane have not yet been publicly identified in the reporting available here.

Debris recovery and formal crash probes often stretch for weeks after impact, as seen when the Coast Guard recovered debris from a Boston-bound medevac jet missing off Nantucket.

What investigators still have to pin down

The NTSB has not issued a final cause. Officials are looking at icing, the thunderstorm, and the aircraft’s performance under those conditions. The Piper PA-46’s prior history with icing accidents is part of that review, according to the aviation expert cited in coverage of the probe.

Absolute calendar dates, full passenger identities, and a completed accident report remain outstanding. So does any fuller public release of flight-path data beyond the descent and speed figures already described.

Large-scale crash investigations can expose layered safety failures long after the wreckage is cleared, the kind of slow accounting detailed in the Army probe into cascading safety breakdowns in the Black Hawk crash near Reagan National.

When ice builds on the wings and a light aircraft drops thousands of feet per minute, experience and a clean record are not enough by themselves. Weather still wins if the plane cannot stay ahead of it, and six families are left with the bill.