Was Family Plane Crash Deliberate?

Eric Johnson told his ex-wife, "You're not going to get her," shortly before the small plane he was piloting with his 8-year-old daughter Emily crashed into his former mother-in-law's house, killing them both.

The mother-in-law, Vivian Pace, wasn't injured and told reporters outside her damaged home Tuesday about the phone call.

She said her daughter, Beth Johnson, was worried after Emily didn't show up for school after a weekend vacation with her father. Beth finally reached Eric Johnson by cell phone shortly before the crash.

"I've got her, and you're not going to get her," he told her, according to Pace.

Johnson, a student pilot who had soloed before, had taken off in a leased, single-engine Cessna from a southern Indiana airport near Bloomington on Monday morning. Less than two hours later, officials said, the plane smashed into a wall of Pace's home.

Andrew Todd Fox of the National Transportation Safety Board declined to say if Johnson, 47, said anything over the plane's radio before the crash. The airport has no controller on duty, so no recording was available of any communication, he said.

Pace believes the crash was deliberate.

"That was the only way he could hurt Beth. That was the only way he could get to her," she said.

State and Bedford police were treating the case as a suicide and homicide, State Police 1st Sgt. Dave Bursten said. He said they had yet to find any notes indicating Eric Johnson's intentions with the flight, but the fact that the house was his ex-wife's mother's home raised serious questions.

Bursten said findings from a preliminary crash investigation have led police to believe the plane intentionally crashed into the Bedford home, CBS News affiliate WISH-TV reports.

The couple had divorced in November after 12 years of marriage, Pace said.

Beth Johnson went to the Bedford Police Department the morning of the crash to file a missing person report, police Maj. Dennis Parsley said Tuesday.

She gave officers no indication of any threats against Emily, Parsley said, and told police that her ex-husband, a property manager for the state Department of Natural Resources, had recently taken the girl to Cancun for a few days of vacation.

"(Emily) was to spend the weekend with dad, and dad was supposed to bring her to school Monday morning," Parsley said.

Fox said Tuesday that investigators were looking at whether the plane was functioning properly and hoped to have a preliminary report within a week.

At Parkview Primary School in Bedford, where Emily was a first-grader, counselors were called in to help the students, Principal Sari Wood said Tuesday.

"We're all grieving over this," Wood said. She described Emily as a "dear little girl" who "got a kick out of things and enjoyed life."

"She just was one of those really friendly, really open little kids," Wood said.