1 dead after banner-towing plane crashes in Hollywood
A small banner plane that took off from North Perry Airport crashed, killing one person on board, near a Target shopping center on North Park Road in Hollywood on Wednesday afternoon, officials said.
The single-engine Piper PA-25-235 crashed shortly before 1 p.m., the Federal Aviation Administration said in an email.
The plane burst into flames after the crash, Deanna Bettineschi, a Hollywood Police spokesperson, said in an email.
Bettineschi said it appears there was one occupant who is dead. The FAA said it did not know how many people were onboard.
Preliminary information shows the plane departed from North Perry Airport in Pembroke Pines, Arlene Satchell, a spokesperson for the airport, said in an email.
The charred wreckage of the plane was still on the ground next to Target about 2 p.m. as police closed off the stretch of North Park Road, just north of Hollywood Boulevard, where the crash occurred.
Some people who worked nearby and witnessed the crash were shaken.
Vicky Amador, an office manager at the nearby Hollywood Plaza Dental Center, said her co-worker saw the whole thing and was traumatized, having never witnessed death before.
Amador said her co-worker watched as the plane flipped and heard the “ch-ch-ch” of it spinning as it went down before bursting into flames. Fire rescue arrived in minutes and extinguished the flames, Amador said.
Katrina Bravo, a manager at Big Louie’s pizza across the street, said she looked outside after the crash and saw “a ball of flames.”
“I just looked and said ‘Oh, my God,’” Bravo said.
Others described seeing plumes of smoke.
Christopher Apinis, a sales manager at Gsource Technologies, was smoking a cigarette outside the office building across the street from the Target when he heard the engine start to sputter and the loud bang of an explosion.
He watched as flames and black plumes of smoke overtook the plane, the smell of burnt gasoline in the air.
“You could feel the heat on the other side of the street,” Apinis said.
A video he took depicts the immediate aftermath of the crash as sirens begin to wail and fire rescue and police rush to the scene to spray the plane down with a hose.
Apinis said he heard from another bystander that a car driving by narrowly dodged the plane as it was crashing. Hollywood Police said the plane did not hit any other vehicles.
“It’s crazy,” he said. “You could just randomly be driving down the street and a plane just comes and hits you.”
The National Transportation Safety Board and the FAA will investigate.
Hollywood Police ask drivers to avoid North Park Road between Hollywood Boulevard and Johnson Street. Roads in the area are expected to be shut down for several hours, Bettineschi said, and anyone trying to go to Memorial Regional Hospital will not be able take North Park Road.
No other details are available.
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