Indiana High School Star Returns Home After Michigan Plane Crash at LinesMaker

Indiana High School Star Returns Home After Michigan Plane Crash

FORT WAYNE, Ind. — The fam­ily of a high school bas­ket­ball star from Fort Wayne says he has returned home more than three months after suf­fer­ing a seri­ous head injury in a Michi­gan plane crash that killed his father and stepmother.

Austin Hatch, who had accepted a schol­ar­ship to play bas­ket­ball at Michi­gan start­ing in 2013, still faces a long recov­ery from the June 24 crash that also left him with a punc­tured lung and bro­ken ribs and col­lar­bone, accord­ing to a fam­ily state­ment emailed Sun­day to the Jour­nal Gazette.

“While Austin has made great improve­ments, he still has obsta­cles to over­come as he con­tin­ues to heal, grieve and accli­mate to life after tragedy,” the state­ment said.

Hatch’s father, Stephen Hatch, was fly­ing the single-engine plane when it crashed near Charlevoix, Mich. A pre­lim­i­nary National Trans­porta­tion Safety Board said Hatch had told Charlevoix Munic­i­pal Air­port he was exe­cut­ing a GPS approach at a time when wit­nesses said the cloud ceil­ing was about 200 feet above ground level.

Austin Hatch also sur­vived a 2003 crash near Fort Wayne of a plane piloted by Stephen Hatch that killed the boy’s mother, a sis­ter and a brother.

“We are extremely thank­ful and relieved that Austin is home with us,” Hatch’s fam­ily said in Sunday’s statement.

The fam­ily, how­ever, did not say where “home” will be for the Can­ter­bury High School stand­out, who had been liv­ing in Fort Wayne with his father and stepmother.

The fam­ily asked for pri­vacy for Hatch, say­ing that he is not ready to be interviewed.

In the state­ment, the fam­ily thanked Hatch’s sup­port­ers in Fort Wayne and around the coun­try, along with his care­givers at Mun­son Med­ical Cen­ter in Tra­verse City, Mich., and at the Reha­bil­i­ta­tion Insti­tute of Chicago.

“Your excel­lent care, com­pas­sion and sup­port have made a dif­fer­ence in all of our lives and in Austin’s recov­ery,” the state­ment said.

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