It was almost midnight Tuesday when residents of a Clayton County subdivision were startled by the loud crash of a small plane tearing through a tree canopy behind their homes.
Police said they received a distress call from the 1973 fixed-wing, single-engine aircraft around 11:55 p.m., letting them know it was running out of fuel. It took authorities more than an hour to find the crash site off Tara Beach Lane in the Tara Beach Estates neighborhood just outside Irondale, officials said.
Donell Edwards said he was watching TV when he heard a “loud bang noise” but didn’t know what it was until he heard officers talking about a plane crash. That’s when he realized they were searching in the wrong direction and pointed them to where he thought the noise originated.
“I’m a retired veteran, so I haven’t thrown a grenade in a minute, but I know what they sound like,” he said. “It sounded like one of them.”
Credit: John Spink / John.Spink@ajc.com
Credit: John Spink / John.Spink@ajc.com
Police found the plane within a few minutes about a quarter mile behind the homes, Edwards said. The four-seater was upside down and suspended in a small tree.
Two women were aboard and had already escaped the wreckage. Police found them on the ground in the woods. They were taken to a hospital with injuries that weren’t considered life-threatening, according to police.
Edwards said he bought his home in 2019 but has lived in the area for 20 years and said it’s typically quiet with little crime. But when he first heard the commotion, he thought police were looking for a suspect.
Another resident, Colby Kornoelje, had the same thought. He had just gotten home from the gym and was lying in bed when he heard the sirens approaching and thought maybe police were engaged in a pursuit along McDonough Road, which runs along the back of the neighborhood.
“But then I heard a bunch of people running through the yard and backyard. I was like, ‘Oh, my goodness!’” he said. “So I was setting up in my window just kind of peering out, hoping they don’t see me too much ... I didn’t know if it was someone at large or whatnot. It was just mayhem. I was just peeking over and they were yelling, ‘Hey, we’re over here! We’re over here!’ And I was like, ‘Oh, my goodness, this is going to be crazy!’”
Both Edwards and Kornoelje stayed up watching the events unfold and were relieved to learn there were no fatalities.
“They was lucky to survive that,” Edwards said.
Kornoelje noticed a grocery bag in the rubble with a full drink still inside as if the plane’s occupants had just made a trip to the store before boarding.
“It’s crazy to think that that was someone’s life, and all of a sudden they were in a crash,” he said, adding that it was a sad realization of how quickly things can go wrong.
The Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board have taken over the investigation. No other details have been released about the crash or the women aboard the plane, which was registered out of Houston, Texas. It is not clear from where it took off or where it was headed, as its owner opted out of public flight tracking.
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