SEDGWICK – Two people died Sunday afternoon when their single-engine plane crashed into a thickly wooded area about a mile east of Route 15.

Investigators would not release the names of the victims or details about the plane early Sunday evening as crews worked feverishly to cut a path through the dense forest to the still-smoldering wreckage.

The two-seat plane caught fire and burned after impact, according to officials from the Hancock County Sheriff’s Department. The airplane burned so badly that only the metal framework was remaining.

Because of the fire damage, investigators could not make a positive identification of the two bodies, according to a news release. The Medical Examiner’s Office is assisting with the investigation.

Witnesses said the small plane flew above the Country View Drive-in, a local restaurant, as well as a nearby blueberry field several times before disappearing into the forest across Route 15 at about 3:30 p.m..

In the nearby takeout restaurant, about 10 workers – many of whom saw the plane just before it crashed – gathered in the kitchen and recounted the plane’s unsteady flight before the crash.

“It was doing all kinds of flips and everything,” said restaurant owner Walter Smith, shaking his head.

“It looked to me like he was messing around and lost control,” said Katie Clark of Deer Isle, who was taking an order at the restaurant’s takeout window when she saw the plane disappear over the hill. “It looked like [the plane] kind of wobbled a bit before it went down.”

Summer visitors Paula Kettlewell of Charlottesville, Va., and her mother were having lunch at the Sedgwick eatery when the small plane flew by very low. “It flew by the back of the restaurant, then by the side, very low,” she said.

While the engine noise was loud because it was so close, she said, it didn’t sound as if it were misfiring. She heard no sputtering.

The small plane then passed across Route 15 and looked as though it looped into nearby woods and disappeared. She said there was no sound of an explosion, but that about a minute after it disappeared, there was a thick plume of black smoke coming from over the hill.

She wondered whether a plowed field nearby might have been the intended landing spot.

Fire and rescue personnel arrived within 10 or so minutes after she saw the smoke, Kettlewell said.

Media representatives were barred from viewing the wreckage, with investigators citing a need to secure the scene for investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board, an independent federal agency charged by Congress with investigating civil aviation accidents.

According to a National Transportation Safety Board database, there have been four previous air accidents in Maine this year, although none involved fatalities. The other accidents were in Lincoln, Ashland, Brewer and Trenton.

The last fatal air accident in Maine occurred on Dec. 22, 2000, when a Beech KingAir B200 crashed in Rangeley, killing a commercial pilot and passenger. A final report on the cause of that accident is not yet available.

Over the past five years, the federal safety board has investigated 61 accidents in Maine. Many of these, like two of the previous accidents this year, involved forced landings at smaller airports. However, 10 of the accidents the past five years resulted in 20 deaths.

Once a general aviation accident is reported to the safety board, it sends out one or two investigators from a regional office, said Paul Schlamm, an NTSB duty officer reached Sunday in Washington.

Schlamm said that investigators document, then examine, the scene. They then broaden their investigation beyond physical evidence of the plane for anything that might give clues to the accident: weather reports, aircraft maintenance reports, a log of aircraft transmissions to air traffic control, interviews with those on the plane or with witnesses.

If necessary, the NTSB will also do “a tear-down” of the engine. The agency sends the dismantled engine along with any other important parts to an intermediary warehouse. Ultimately, the parts go to Washington for analysis, Schlamm said.

A final report for investigations of general aviation accidents typically takes from four to six months to complete, he said.

NEWS reporter Michael O’D. Moore contributed to this report.