Monday, 23rd December 2024

Tarzan actor Joe Lara and wife dies in a plane-crash

All seven passengers onboard a plane, including Tarzan actor Joe Lara and his wife, are suspected of dying after it crashed into a lake near the US city of Nashville.

Monday, 31st May 2021

Tarzan actor Joe Lara with wife

All seven passengers onboard a plane, including Tarzan actor Joe Lara and his wife, are suspected of dying after it crashed into a lake near the US city of Nashville.

The small business plane crashed around 11:00 local time on Saturday, shortly after taking off from Smyrna, Tennessee Airport to Palm Beach, Florida, Rutherford County Fire & Rescue (RCFR) said on Facebook. The plane took off in Percy Priest Lake, about 12 miles south of Nashville.

CNN reported that the Federal Aviation Administration confirmed that seven people were on board the plane.

On Saturday night, search and rescue operations switched to recovery efforts, RCFR incident leader Captain Joshua Sanders told a news conference.

"At this stage, we are no longer trying to look for living victims (search), so we are now recovering as much as we can from the accident," he said.

RCFR said on Facebook on Sunday afternoon that repair operations had found 'various components of the aircraft and human remains' in a dirt field about a kilometre long.

The operations would last until dark and resume Monday morning, RCFR wrote.

Joe Lara is popularly known as playing Tarzan in the 1989 television movie "Tarzan in Manhattan." He also starred in the television series "Tarzan: The Epic Adventures", which went on TV from 1996-1997.

He got married in 2018 to Gwen Shamblin, who was the leader of a Christian weight loss group called Weigh Down Ministries. She founded the group in 1986 and launched the Remnant Fellowship Church in Brentwood, Tennessee, in 1999.

She is outlived by two children from a prior marriage, as per an announcement posted on the church's website.