One dead, two injured in fiery caught-on-video plane crash on Long Island
One person was killed and two others injured when a small plane crashed in a Long Island neighborhood on Sunday — with the aircraft seen bursting into flames on wild doorbell cam video.
The plane crashed near Fifth Street and North Wellwood Avenue in Lindenhurst around 3 p.m., Suffolk County police said.
The pilot reported smoke in the cockpit as the aircraft approached Republic Airport, a National Transportation Safety Board spokeswoman said, according to Newsday.
The craft’s engine can be heard roaring on dramatic Ring camera footage, followed by a large bang. A ball of flames then erupts before a plume of black smoke rises up behind the trees.
“Basically you heard like, tah-tah-tah, and then all of a sudden you heard a bang and a little bit like a squeak,” said local resident Ken Defreitas, whose doorbell cam captured the explosion in a wooded area near his home.
“At first it didn’t really take,” Defreitas, a volunteer with the West Babylon Fire Department, told The Post. “You know these cars that backfire? That’s what it sounded like.
“I started listening to my pager and that’s when they said that they had a plane go down,” he said. “I went outside and you see all the black smoke.”
Police said the person killed was pronounced dead at the scene, while the other two were transported to Stony Brook Hospital by a Suffolk County Police Department chopper.
They suffered third-degree burns, Jamie Atkinson, the deputy coordinator of Suffolk County Fire, Rescue & Emergency Services said, according to Newsday.
The plane was identified as a Piper PA 28 by NBC-TV News.
Nobody on the ground was hurt.
The identities of the three people on the plane have not been released.
Suffolk County cops said they shut down local roads while investigating the crash.
The crash occurred close to Long Island Rail Road tracks and caused service to be halted for about an hour MTA spokesman Aaron Donovan told Newsday, adding that passengers may experience “possible residual” delays.
