News about Mike Cahill

In late 2020, accountant David Smith and his wife Elise (pictured left) moved to Armidale, northern NSW, as the local Catholic Church's Diocesan Financial Administrator. In the years since, the couple, who had been living in Tamworth, have become respected members of the community and welcomed a fifth child. But then tragedy struck on Friday, killing three of Elise's children Raphael, 11, Evita, nine, and Philomena, six, who were sleeping in a paddock at Gundaroo, just north of Canberra (bottom right).

The moment controllers realized something had gone horribly wrong with the light aircraft minutes after it took off from Canberra on Friday was caught on air traffic cameras. On the 750 km ride to Armidale in northern NSW, the experienced pilot, 65, was flying the Cirrus SR22 with his 11-year-old grandson and his two grandchildren, aged nine and six. It crashed minutes after takeoff, plummeting from the sky and smashing into the ground, where it burst into flames near Lake George in the NSW Tablelands. ATC radio transmission records at the time of the accident reveal the increasingly desperate attempts by air traffic controllers to lift the pilot when they realized his plane had vanished from their screens.

Around 3 p.m. today, a light plane crashed near Lake George north-east of Canberra. The crash was described as "fatal," but the police were left with no information about the deceased, so far. The plane crashed on Hadlow Drive in Gundaroo, about four kilometres inland from Lake George, before bursting into flames. Emergency personnel were quickly on the scene to douse the fire (right) with paramedics and NSW police also at the crash site.