A small two-engine cargo plane crashed into a home near Chicago Midway Airport shortly after takeoff early Tuesday morning, killing the pilot but sparing an elderly couple inside the house.
Authorities told
Chicago Tribune that the plane started experiencing engine problems shortly after taking off from Midway and contacted air traffic control to alert the airport that the aircraft was returning.
The plane, though, couldn't make it and slammed into the house in a neighborhood a quarter-mile from the airport, coming to rest in the home's living room. The couple – an 84-year-old man and an 82-year-old woman – were asleep in their bedroom about 2:45 a.m. when the plane hit.
"They were in a bedroom next to the living room and the living room is gone," Chicago Fire Chief Michael Fox told reporters. "Eight inches. They were very lucky."
Emergency crews worked in frigid morning temperatures to stabilize the house so they could later move the airplane,
according to WMAQ-TV. National Transportation Safety Board Air Safety investigators hope to get into the home to begin their investigation of the accident by Tuesday afternoon, Tim Sorensen, of the NTSB, told the television station.
"The aircraft is obviously certainly damaged, but the air frame is more or less intact," Sorensen said.
Luz Cazares, 62, told the Tribune that she feared for her next door neighbors' lives when she realized the plane had crashed into their home in the middle of the night.
"A big part of the airplane was in their living room," Cazares said. "I thought they were dead. I ran to the back of the yard, I jumped the fence and I knocked the back door of the kitchen and she opened the door and I took her outside."
When police arrived they took the couple to the home of neighbor, Jeanine Venckus.
"They're OK. Not a scratch on them, not a scratch on them," Venckus told the Tribune. "They're shook up and bewildered."
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