William Ginsler identified as pilot in Lake Michigan plane crash which killed 2, autopsy scheduled
A Wisconsin pilot and flight instructor Bill Gensler was one of two middle-aged men who died Saturday when the plane they were flying crashed into Lake Michigan, a spokesman with the U.S. Coast Guard confirmed Sunday. The Milwaukee County medical examiner’s office said Sunday it would conduct autopsies of the two victims.
Petty Officer Third Class Christopher Yaw, public affairs officer for Coast Guard in Cleveland, said William Gensler was the pilot of the single-engine 1975 Piper Cherokee plane.
He said he was not able to release the name off the other man aboard the plane, but said the Coast Guard did confirm that Gensler and the man were the only two people aboard the four-seater plane when it crashed into the lake.
According to David Mann, the general manager at Batten International Airport in Racine, the plane took off from the airfield at about 2:30 p.m. on Saturday
The Coast Guard was notified of a potential crash at about 4 p.m.
Saturday after air traffic controllers at Milwaukee’s General Mitchell International Airport lost radar and radio contact with the plane about a mile offshore near Cudahy, Yaw said.
Mann said Gensler had been flying out of Batten for nearly 40 years.
