zombola
05-09-2015, 01:05 PM
Four people died on Friday when the small plane they were riding in crashed on a busy Atlanta-area highway after taking off from a nearby airport, local authorities said.
The accident shut down a stretch of Interstate 285 and caused traffic problems throughout Atlanta. But no drivers on the major thoroughfare reported any injuries, including a tractor-trailer driver who said the aircraft clipped his truck.
"It was a sheer miracle that no one was hurt and that we had no other victims," said DeKalb County Fire Rescue Captain Eric Jackson.
The Piper PA-32 crashed Friday morning after departing from the DeKalb–Peachtree Airport, just northeast of Atlanta, authorities said.
Investigators do not know what caused the plane to go down about a mile from the airport, Jackson said. Television footage of the smoldering wreckage showed little of the plane was left intact after it hit the center median of the highway.
Three males, one female and a pet were on board, he said.
Gerald Smith, the driver of the tractor-trailer rig, told WSB-TV that he saw the plane approaching his truck at a high rate of speed and slammed on his brakes.
"I heard an impact hit the front of my truck," Smith said. "If I would have stayed on the gas, I would have met it head on."
The eastbound lanes of I-285 were to be closed indefinitely but the westbound lanes might reopen Friday afternoon, said Annalysce Wilson, spokeswoman for the Georgia Department of Transportation.
(Additional reporting by David Beasley; Writing by Colleen Jenkins
The accident shut down a stretch of Interstate 285 and caused traffic problems throughout Atlanta. But no drivers on the major thoroughfare reported any injuries, including a tractor-trailer driver who said the aircraft clipped his truck.
"It was a sheer miracle that no one was hurt and that we had no other victims," said DeKalb County Fire Rescue Captain Eric Jackson.
The Piper PA-32 crashed Friday morning after departing from the DeKalb–Peachtree Airport, just northeast of Atlanta, authorities said.
Investigators do not know what caused the plane to go down about a mile from the airport, Jackson said. Television footage of the smoldering wreckage showed little of the plane was left intact after it hit the center median of the highway.
Three males, one female and a pet were on board, he said.
Gerald Smith, the driver of the tractor-trailer rig, told WSB-TV that he saw the plane approaching his truck at a high rate of speed and slammed on his brakes.
"I heard an impact hit the front of my truck," Smith said. "If I would have stayed on the gas, I would have met it head on."
The eastbound lanes of I-285 were to be closed indefinitely but the westbound lanes might reopen Friday afternoon, said Annalysce Wilson, spokeswoman for the Georgia Department of Transportation.
(Additional reporting by David Beasley; Writing by Colleen Jenkins