A small airplane en route to a college football playoff game on Saturday crashed into a post office parking lot in Louisiana shortly after takeoff, killing five people, including a well-known sports reporter who was the daughter-in-law of one of the team’s coaches.
The two-engine Piper Cheyenne crashed in the city of Lafayette about 1.6km from the regional airport where the flight began, US Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Tony Molinaro said.
Investigators from the agency and the US National Transportation Safety Board were investigating, according to Molinaro and a board statement on Twitter.
Photo: AP
It was an eight-passenger aircraft, Lafayette Fire Chief Robert Benoit said.
Six people were on board the plane, five of whom were killed, he said.
The sixth, a 37-year-old man, was being treated at an area hospital along with two people who were in the post office.
A person who was either in or near a car on the ground was also “impacted” by the crash and was being treated for injuries, Benoit said.
He did not elaborate.
A blackened car sat in the post office parking lot, which was carpeted with scattered tree limbs.
Kevin Jackson and other eyewitnesses told KLFY-TV that the airplane hit a car as it fell, and that someone could be heard screaming inside the vehicle.
Steven Ensminger Jr, son of the offensive coordinator for the Louisiana State University football team, said his wife, Carley McCord, was on board the flight and died when it crashed.
He said the airplane was en route to the Peach Bowl playoff game in Atlanta, Georgia, between LSU and Oklahoma.
“I just don’t feel like this is real,” Ensminger Jr told reporters in an Instagram message.
He said he was unable to go to the game and was at work when the crash happened.
He said that his father, Steven Ensminger, called him just before the elder Ensminger got to the stadium.
The coach had tears in his eyes when he appeared on the field at the start of the game on Saturday afternoon, and LSU players embraced him with hugs.
“He’s the MVP right now,” LSU head coach Ed Orgeron said in a half-time interview.
The Lafayette Fire Department identified the other people who were killed as Ian Biggs, 51, the pilot; Robert Vaughn Crisp II, 59; Gretchen Vincent, 51; and Michael Walker Vincent, 15.
The injured passenger, Stephen Wade Berzas, was in critical condition, department spokesman Alton Trahan said.
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