2 dead in plane crash near Plant City

Hillsborough County - Investigators are trying to figure out what caused a single-engine plane to crash Sunday afternoon, killing the two men on board.

Witnesses who watched it come down say they knew before the crash something wasn't right.

"The plane circled one time -- one complete circle -- and we noticed it was flying low then," explained neighbor Jayson Brown.

Investigators say the plane was flying over an area of eastern Hillsborough County just north of State Road 60 and west of County Line Road. After that first low circle, witnesses say it sounded like the engine simply stopped.

"When it died, it was sputtering. And then it quit and then it did a nosedive down into the trees and flipped and turned over," Brown recalled.

Officials arrived on the scene to find neither of the two men on board had survived the crash. They spent the afternoon gathering information to try and figure out what went wrong.

There are three small airports in the area, though at this point it's unclear where the plane took off from. It crashed just off Tangled Oaks Place, a sparsely populated area near Plant City.

Brown said he called 911 immediately when it happened.

"We jumped the fence, ran over there and we saw what had happened. It wasn't a good sight," he added.

Officials say they'll need to perform autopsies on both of the men to be able to positively identify them. That will likely take place Monday.

Investigators with the FAA were on scene Sunday afternoon to survey the wreckage. They say it could take weeks before they are able to pinpoint exactly what caused the plane to crash.