Plane Used by Tom Cruise Movie Crew Crashes in Colombia

A small plane assigned to the crew of a movie starring Tom Cruise crashed in Colombia on Friday, killing two people, including a Los Angeles-based film pilot, and seriously injuring a third, the country's civilian aviation authority said.

An official with the aviation agency, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter, said Cruise was not on the aircraft.

The official said an American, Alan Purwin, was killed along with the Colombian Carlos Berl. A third person aboard, American pilot Jimmy Lee Garland, was rushed to a hospital in Medellin.

The official said the twin-engine Aerostar ran into bad weather late Friday afternoon after taking off from the colonial town of Santa Fe de Antioquia for a short flight to Medellin.

Cruise, a trained pilot, arrived last month in Colombia to film a movie called "Mena," about an American pilot who worked for the late cocaine kingpin Pablo Escobar.

Cruise's spokeswoman, Amanda Lundberg, had no comment.

Purwin was founder and president of the Los Angeles-based Helinet Technologies, a company providing aerial surveillance technology to law enforcement and government agencies. On the company's website, he's described as "one of the top film pilots of his generation" with a list of credits from television and major Hollywood movies such as "Transformers," "Pearl Harbor," and "Pirates of the Caribbean."