SNOW HILL, N.C. (AP) — A Connecticut couple were killed in a small plane crash in North Carolina.

Mark Sobel and wife, Joan Wilson, both 56, were flying home Thursday to South Windsor, Conn., said South Windsor Mayor Matthew Streeter, who knew the couple for 20 years. The couple also lived in Florida for several months a year, Streeter said.

"They were well-known in the community," Streeter told WFSB-TV in Hartford. "When you have kids in the community, when you're active in the community, I think it's going to be a shock to the town."

He said Mark Sobel was a pilot. Federal aviation officials said the plane was headed from Page Field in Fort Myers, Fla., to Brainard Airport in Hartford, Conn.

Patty McQuillan, spokeswoman for the North Carolina Department of Crime Control and Public Safety, said emergency officials reported that the pilot said he had icing on the wings. The plane disappeared from radar and lost radio contact, she said.

The accident occurred about 1:30 p.m. Thursday, said Kathleen Bergen, spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration in Atlanta. The plane crashed in a farm field several hundred feet from a residential area near Snow Hill, located about 20 miles southwest of Greenville.

The FAA Web site indicates the plane was a Lancair IV-P, a homebuilt, amateur plane completed in 2003.

Both the FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board will investigate the crash, Bergen said. The Civil Air Patrol also was called because

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the incident was first reported as a missing aircraft, McQuillan said.