A small plane crashed into a Minnesota home around midnight on Sunday morning, killing all three passengers on board and narrowly sparing two residents of the home, who were uninjured, a local official told NBC News.
The Cessna 172 plane crashed into the second floor of the home in Hermantown, a city about 16 miles west of the city of Duluth, before landing in the backyard, according to information released by the city.
The three passengers — who have not yet been publicly identified but include a woman from St. Paul and two men from the city of Burnsville — were all in their early 30s, according to information from the city.
Joe Wicklund, communications director for Hermantown, told NBC News that the plane “just barely” missed the two residents of the home, who Wicklund said were on the second floor at the time of the crash.
Video from the site shows a hole in the middle of the front of the roof, debris scattered on the grass around the home and what appears to be at least half of the rear part of the house destroyed.
Officials manning the control tower at Duluth International Airport notified the Hermantown Police Department just before midnight on Saturday that they believed a small airplane had crashed after it left their radar when it was between a mile and a mile-and-a-half south of the airport, according to information released by the town. Police and fire department officials subsequently arrived on the scene and found the wreckage.
The Duluth News Tribune reported that the homeowners, Jason and Crystal Hoffman, lived there for seven years, after moving from Worthington, Minnesota, a city near the border of Iowa.
“I’m still not sure what to think,” Jason Hoffman told the Duluth News Tribune on Sunday morning. “It doesn’t seem real, at all. We’re just lucky. The loss of life is heartbreaking. At the same time we’re grateful for making it through this.”
Hoffman told the newspaper he remembered “waking up to a very loud explosion and my wife screaming.”
“The first thing I thought was that the furnace exploded,” he added.
After Hoffman stumbled through the dark to retrieve a flashlight, the newspaper reported, he saw an airplane wheel next to his bed and realized there had been a crash.
The couple found their cat unharmed in the basement, according to the Duluth News Tribune, and they eventually left the home when the dust became too much to bear, despite neighbors’ warnings to stay inside as there were live power lines around the home.
NBC News could not immediately reach the Hoffmans.
Officials from the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board are conducting an investigation on site, Wicklund said, adding that the cause of the crash has not yet been determined.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
