The tail of a small aircraft sits behind a burned home following a crash in East Haven, Connecticut, USA 09 August 2013. Local media reports that the pilot, and two children who where in the home were killed.
By Elizabeth Chuck, Staff Writer, NBC News
Four bodies have been recovered from the charred wreckage of two Connecticut homes after a small plane trying to land on Friday slammed into the houses and burst into flames, a fire official said Saturday.
"We were able to pull four bodies from the plane and one of the homes,'' East Haven Fire Department Assistant Chief Chuck Licata said at a press conference.
The dead were confirmed to be the pilot, former Microsoft executive Bill Henningsgaard of Medina, Wash., and his teenage son, Maxwell, according to the website of Eastside Pathways, a nonprofit in Bellevue, Wash., where Henningsgaard served as executive director.
Licata said two children who had been in one of the East Haven, Conn., homes were also among those confirmed dead. Neighbors said they were ages 13 and one.
The other house that the Rockwell International Turbo Commander 690B twin-engine turbo prop plane crashed into late Friday morning was vacant, a National Transportation Safety Board investigator said on Friday.
Relatives of the Henningsgaards told NBC New York said the father and son, who had been flying toward Tweed-New Haven Airport when the plane went down on a few blocks north, were touring colleges. They were visiting eight schools, including Yale in New Haven, the relatives said.
There was no distress call prior to the 11:22 a.m. crash, Robert Gretz of the NTSB said, and there had been no reports of the engine stopping or the aircraft running out of gas. The plane had fueled at nearby Teterboro Airport in New Jersey.
The mother of the children who died was “devastated,” East Haven Mayor Joe Maturo said at a news conference Friday evening.
Shaken neighbors described the moments before and after the accident, which engulfed the two Charter Oak Avenue homes in flames.
Russell Hickson told NBC Connecticut that he noticed the plane flying eerily low over the neighborhoodt.
"It went dead quiet" before it went down, Hickson said.
Greg Watras, 27, who lives seven houses away, awoke to the sound of fire engines tearing down the street.
"It was a big fire, the biggest fire I ever seen,” he told NBC News.
Alexis Hernandez, 17, was home alone with her 12-year-old sister — who is friends with the 13-year-old who died — when she heard the crash and ran out to see a house up in flames.
“Living by an airport is so scary," she said. "The planes fly so fast and they must be really low.”
Robert Mallory, an airplane mechanic who lives nearby, told The Hartford Courant he could tell the plane was in trouble by the sound of its motor.
"It just didn't sound right," he said. "It sounded like someone stuck a stick in a lawn mower. It just stopped."
When the plane crashed, Mallory sprinted to his car and raced over to the Charter Oak Avenue homes where the plane landed, reported the newspaper. By the time he got there, the houses were on fire, pieces of the plane were strewn across the lawns, and a woman was outside, screaming for her children.
"They didn't get out," Mallory told The Courant.
Bill Henningsgaard was a former vice president of Microsoft who was active in philanthropic causes. Maxwell Henningsgaard was going to be a senior at Lakeside School in Seattle.
According to Bill Henningsgaard's brother, this wasn't his first plane crash.
In 2009, he and his mother, Edna, survived a crash into the Columbia River near Astoria, Ore.
NBC's Tracy Jarrett, Tracy Connor, Becky Bratu, Matthew DeLuca and Daniel Arkin contributed to this report.
Related:
- At least 4 killed after plane crashes into Connecticut homes
- Tragedy as plane crashes into Connecticut community
- Four confirmed dead after plane crash in East Haven
