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Major NY Tech Company Founder Who Flew Flight With Shatner One Of Two Killed In NJ Plane Crash

A pilot who recently accompanied William Shatner on a trip to space was aboard a plane that crashed and killed him and another man in New Jersey, one of his company's employees confirmed.

Glen De Vries

Glen De Vries

Photo Credit: Glen De Vries Instagram

Glen M. Devries, 49, of New York, NY, and Thomas P. Fisher, 54, of Hopatcong, NJ, were both aboard the single-engine Cessna 172 that crashed in a wooded area of a state park near Lake Kemah around 4 p.m., according to New Jersey State Police spokeswoman Brandi Slota and the FAA.

De Vries accompanied Shatner on the highly-publicized Oct. 13 mission with Jeff Bezos' company, Blue Origin, online records show. His plane had been reported missing nearly an hour before it went down on Thursday.

"The world lost a visionary," tweeted Nadia M. Bracken, who works at Medidata Solutions, co-founded by de Vries. "May his legacy of innovation in the life sciences industry live on."Medidata has been touted as "the world’s most-used clinical research platform."

de Vries' flight had departed Essex County Airport in Caldwell, NJ for Sussex Airport when it crashed Thursday, the FAA said.

The Manhattan native -- who studied probabilistic algorithms at NYU and has a degree in molecular biology and genetics from Carnegie Mellon -- once described himself as the nerdiest kid at summer camp.

He went on to helped create one of the world's largest software companies, with a staff recently estimated at nearly 700 in the United States, the United Kingdom and Japan.

Tarek Sherif, who co-founded the company with him once called de Vries "absolutely brilliant," as well as "open-minded and very gregarious."

Not everyone knew that de Vries was also a ballroom dancer, as well as a marathoner.

The FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board were investigating. The NTSB is leading the investigation.

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