Friend calls woman who died in plane crash in Steamboat Springs a ‘star’

STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colorado – The Routt County Coroner on Tuesday identified the two people aboard a small plane who died when the plane crashed into a trailer park near Steamboat Springs Airport/Bob Adams Field (SBS).

According to the city of Steamboat Springs, the twin-engine Cessna 421 plane was believed to be en route from Longmont to Ogden, Utah, when it crashed in West Acres Mobile Park, killing 67-year-old Dan Dunn and 42-year-old Jessica Pauline Melton.

After Melton was identified, friends and colleagues began sharing their memories of her on social media.

“I was screaming and I dropped my phone. And my two little kids are there saying, ‘Mommy, Mommy, what’s going on?'” Caitlin Brozna-Smith said of reading the posts on Facebook. “It was completely out of touch with reality because we were born the same year. She’s 42 and we were just brothers in arms.”

Brozna-Smith said she has known Melton for about 10 years when she worked at an ice rink in Denver.

“We would train on the ice together and do ice shows together, and I would share some of my students with her and teach some of her students,” Brozna-Smith recalls. “Jess never lost sight of the bigger picture. She never lost sight of life outside of figure skating. That also shaped my ideals when I coached: I tried to teach these kids who probably weren’t going to go to the Olympics one day, life skills, confidence, work ethic, commitment and being a good team member – skills that would serve them well after their figure skating careers. And Jess did that very, very well.”

Brozna-Smith said she had two children and quit figure skating to focus on starting a dance studio, Bella Diva World Dance, and lost touch with Melton around 2020.

Brozna-Smith said Melton must have seen a fundraiser on Facebook to expand the dance studio.

“I got this email from her. I didn’t recognize her and her at first because it came through her construction company, which I didn’t even know she had. And she made a very, very generous donation,” Brozna-Smith said. “She knew how expensive materials and labor were. And she said, ‘Hey, here’s this check. This will get you where you need to go.’ I was just so overwhelmed that someone would do something like that for someone. We weren’t family, you know, we were colleagues and friends for many years, but if she showed that much compassion and empathy and generosity, you know, what must she have done for her real family and her best friends? I think she’s going to leave that legacy that other people want to pass on in her name.”

Brozna-Smith described Melton as a shining star and said there was a large community of people who would miss her dearly.

“She was at the peak of her career and doing such amazing things in her figure skating life and her construction company. And she traveled a lot, and it was like this bright fire that just went out,” Brozna-Smith said. “She’ll never know the impact she had (on the dance studio) because we serve mostly international and multicultural students and we try to keep our prices low so they can afford dance lessons.”

According to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), there were 381 small aircraft crashes between 2012 and 2021. Seventy of them were fatal, with 117 people killed.

The Steamboat Springs incident was the third small plane crash in Colorado in 10 days. On June 7, a small plane crashed in an Arvada neighborhood, killing a woman and injuring three others. On Sunday, crews rescued two people from a small plane crash after the pilot attempted to land on Interstate 25 near Spruce Mountain Road near Larkspur, according to police.

“There is no trend in accidents. It’s just that more people fly this time of year,” said Steve Cowell, an aviation safety expert, of the three crashes. “It was pure coincidence that three crashed, three accidents happened within two weeks.”

Cowell said heat can affect the performance of aircraft, but stressed that all aircraft models involved in the crashes were considered reliable.

“As for the Steamboat crash, it’s a beautiful twin-engine airplane built by Cessna years ago. It’s called a Golden Eagle. A 421 seats about six people. The engines are very powerful… it can fly over the mountains with no problem,” Cowell explained.

The official cause of the crash is currently under investigation, but Routt County Emergency Communications says there was an engine problem.

“If they determined there was an engine problem, a lot of things must have gone right for the plane to even be able to maintain an altitude of 10,000 feet,” Cowell said. “In the case of both the Arvada and Larkspur crashes, Centennial Airport is introducing a new fuel that is unleaded, as opposed to the standard low-lead 100 fuel that most general aviation planes use. OK, so that would be the possibility, the commonality, if there is anything. But the NTSB will be able to figure that out pretty quickly.”

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is investigating the crash.