WILLIAMSBURG — A former Baystate Medical Center neurosurgeon from Haydenville was killed Monday while piloting a small airplane that crashed in the woods of northern West Virginia, police said.
West Virginia State Police and the Taylor County Sheriff’s Office identified the victim Wednesday as Dr. Thomas Kaye, 67, news outlets reported. Kaye, who previously served as chief of neurosurgery at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, retired from the hospital in 2018 after nearly two decades of work, according to hospital spokesman Keith O’Connor.
Kaye was the only person aboard the plane, which crashed and caught on fire at 1 p.m. Monday in an unincorporated area between Fairmont and Grafton, according to State Police Sgt. Robert Garrison and the Federal Aviation Administration. The plane, an Aeropro CZ A220, crashed 15 miles north of the North Central West Virginia Airport in Bridgeport, FAA spokeswoman Arlene Salac said.
Kaye was flying from Indiana to Massachusetts and had stopped at the North Central West Virginia Airport for refueling, said National Transportation Safety Board spokesman Peter Knudson.
Taylor County Sheriff Terry Austin said it’s believed Kaye had just purchased the plane and was flying it home.
According to WDTV in Bridgeport, Christopher Comey, chairman of the surgery department at St. Francis Hospital and Medical Center in Hartford, Conn., had asked Kaye to return from his retirement to work at St. Mary’s Hospital in Waterbury, Conn.
“Tom was truly a special person, and our community mourns his passing,” Comey told the TV station.
The FAA will investigate and the NTSB will determine the probable cause of the accident, Salac said.
Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.