Four people were injured when a small plane split in half after crashing into cars on a Texas highway last Wednesday.
The twin-engine propeller plane had only the pilot onboard when it crashed near a highway overpass in Victoria at around 3pm on 11 December.
Three people were hospitalised for “non-life threatening injuries”, with one transported elsewhere for “higher level treatment”, said Victoria Police deputy chief Eline Moya.
The pilot was “being evaluated”, she added.
Tony Poynor, who captured the footage of the crash on his dash camera, said he saw the plane as he was approaching an intersection.
“To the left of me you start seeing on the wall a shadow of this plane,” he said. “Then it passed over the top of my truck. And it’s still horizontal at this point, then about a quarter of a mile in front of me, it starts to wobble.”
Video footage following the incident shows three damaged vehicles and the Piper PA-31 plane split at the fuselage with debris scattered across Mockingbird Lane – a feeder road to the Zac Lentz Parkway.
Moya told reporters at a press conference on Wednesday: “We are glad that it wasn’t worse than what it is. This is not something we see every day.
“But we are glad that people seem to be ok and they are getting checked out.”
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said: “A twin-engine Piper PA-31 crashed in Victoria, Texas, around 3pm local time on Wednesday, Dec. 11. Only the pilot was on board.”
The FAA is investigating the incident.
On Thursday (12 December), one person died, and another was injured when another small plane crashed into a highway in Connecticut.
Passenger Jacob Yankele Friedman was pronounced dead at the scene, while the pilot, Kalmen Goldberger, was transported to an area hospital in New York for minor injuries, said Connecticut State Police.
The plane had taken off from Linden, New Jersey, for Westchester County Airport when it experienced a sudden drop in altitude and hurtled towards Interstate 684.
Preliminary information suggests the sudden drop – reportedly at a rate of roughly 1,000 feet per minute – was caused by engine failure, NTSB confirmed in an email to The Independent.
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