ODESSA, Texas (KTRK) — A small plane bound for Houston’s Ellington Field had trouble taking off from an Odessa, Texas, airfield before clipping power lines and going down near a populated area in the town, authorities said on Tuesday.
Two people onboard the aircraft died from the fiery crash that the Ector County sheriff and the Odessa Fire and Rescue reported at 7 a.m.
“Witnesses said the plane was struggling to gain altitude, took out some powerlines, and ultimately crashed,” Sheriff Mike Griffis told the ABC station in Odessa. “You can see the pilot attempted to avoid houses. A witness said he saw the plane struggling, and then, upon impact, he heard an explosion, some more explosions, and felt the heat.”
Shortly after departing Odessa’s Schlemeyer Field, Griffis said the plane went down in an alleyway but still impacted a mobile home, where crews rescued a woman who was later hospitalized with smoke inhalation.
The fire department said several mobile homes and storage buildings were burning, but crews controlled the fire.
While authorities have yet to confirm the victims’ identities, the Odessa ABC station reported, based on Federal Aviation Administration information, that the plane-a Cessna twin-engine-was registered to Joseph Vincent Summa, the chief executive officer of two companies based in Pasadena: Techcorr USA and Summa Group. The ABC station said it reached out to Techcorr representatives and was awaiting a response.
The sheriff said the American Red Cross set up a temporary shelter for those people driven out of their homes due to the crash.
The National Transportation Safety Board posted on social media about its investigation into a Cessna Citation 550 crash but offered no other details.
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