The president of Tyler Perry Studios was killed in Florida on Friday when the small plane he was flying crashed north of Tampa.
The studio announced the death of Steve Mensch at the age of 62, saying its staff is “incredibly saddened by the passing of our dear friend.”
“I’ve been trying to understand this tragedy all day—what went wrong with that plane,“ wrote Tyler Perry, the studio’s founder and CEO, in an Instagram post. ”Steve loved flying, and he loved that plane; he took so much pride in it.”
“Steve Mensch was truly a kind soul and a great leader at the studio,” he added. “We all adored him and are devastated that he’s gone. I’m praying for his family as we all try to make sense of this heartbreak.”
Mensch’s plane crashed in Homosassa, roughly 60 miles north of Tampa, and a photo taken at the scene shows the single-engine Vans RV-12IS upturned on a hard, possibly concrete, surface.
The Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board are both investigating the incident.
Mensch’s plane was registered to his home address in the Atlanta area, FAA records show.
Mensch was a key advocate for keeping Georgia’s $1 billion annual film tax credit, which has drawn in a dozens of film and television productions and made the Atlanta area an emerging rival to established North American production hubs like Los Angeles, Vancouver, New York and Toronto.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that he began lobbying for state subsidies for film and television when he ran the studio operations of Atlanta-based Turne Broadcasting. He also helped market Georgia in advance of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.
“He was trying to formulate the vision for the marketplace before the Olympics and wanted a think tank of people in the community to make Georgia competitive,” actor Ric Reitz told the newspaper. “He was an important figure in the our growth to become a strong film and TV market.”
Perry hired Mensch to help found and run his Atlanta-based studio, which now covers a sprawling 330 acres, in 2016. He died the same day that the studio’s latest, the World War II drama The Six Triple Eight, debuted in select theaters.
He is survived by his wife and three children.
