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UPDATE: Airplane crash kills 4 in Kansas

CHANUTE, Kan. (AP) — A small airplane that crashed in southeast Kansas on Friday was carrying five people with connections to Oral Roberts University to a Christian youth rally in Iowa.

The Kansas Highway Patrol reported four of the passengers died and one was badly injured. The fatalities are identified as pilot Luke Sheets, of Ephraim, Wis., Austin Anderson, of Ringwood, Okla., Garrett Coble, of Tulsa, Okla., and Stephen Luth, of Muscatine, Iowa.

Hanna Luce, of Garden Valley, Texas, was hospitalized in critical condition. The recent graduate is the daughter of Oral Roberts trustee Ron Luce, founder of Teen Mania Ministries, which was sponsoring this weekend’s Acquire the Fire rally in Council Bluffs, Iowa.

Oral Roberts President Mark Rutland is asking the university community to pray for Luce and remember those who were killed. He says Luth, Sheets and Anderson were recent graduates, and Coble was a former business instructor at the school.

The National Transportation Safety Board says the twin-engine Cessna 401 went down Friday afternoon west of Chanute, Kan., and caught fire.

The NTSB says the plane lost contact with air traffic control after getting permission to descend to a lower altitude.

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