Federal investigators were on the scene Tuesday where a small plane crashed in the back yard of a house near DeKalb-Peachtree Airport.
Brandon Freeman, 35, and Anthony Barnes, 11, both from Alpharetta, were injured in the Monday evening crash, said DeKalb police. Both were transported to a local hospital in stable condition.
Debris from the crash remained in the yard Tuesday morning as investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board searched for clues as to why the plane went down about two miles short of the airport.
Eric Alleyne, an investigator with the NTSB, told the AJC late Tuesday morning that the wreckage would be removed and taken to a hangar in Griffin to be reconstructed and for further examination.
“Luckily, the airplane is somewhat intact,” Alleyne said. “That enables us to do a pretty good examination of the aircraft since we don’t have that much destruction of it.”
He said he had spent much of the morning at DeKalb-Peachtree Airport, where the plane was based, examining maintenance records. A review of the pilot’s training records would also be part fo the investigation, he said.
Investigators sealed off the house in the 2500 block of Hawthorne Drive where the plane crashed as well as a neighboring house where one of the wings fell.
The plane went down in Tom Wroblewski’s back yard.
Wroblewski, who moved to the neighborhood from Grant Park five months ago, said he was about 20 to 25 feet away when the plane crashed.
“I was outside on my patio in the back blowing leaves,” Wroblewski recounted Tuesday morning. “I didn’t hear it coming in because I had the blower on and the engine was off, so it was basically just whizzing in quietly. I’m sure it was making some noise, but with the blower on, I can’t hear anything.”
Immediately after the crash, Wroblewski told his wife to call 911, then he ran to the plane.
Inside, he found the pilot and boy.
“They were both injured but somewhat conscious,” Wroblewski told the AJC. “The boy was screaming for help, and I was able to unbuckle him and pull him out and lay him down on the patio. The man was starting to get out and I was able to help him walk over to the patio.”
He said the boy appeared to have a neck injury as well as some cuts.
“I thought there was a fuel leak at first, so that’s why I wanted to get them out because I didn’t want there to be a fire or explosion, but it turned out there was no fuel in the plane,” Wroblewski said. “Once I didn’t smell any gas, I realized there must not be any gas and one of them said that they ran out of gas, so that made me feel a little bit better.”
Wroblewski called the crash a miracle.
“I am a God-fearing man, but if I wasn’t, then I would be today,” he said. “To come through here the way he did, he was threading the needle, and to land the way he did, that’s amazing.”
Gretchen Thompson lives across the street from Wroblewski.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Thompson, who has lived in the neighborhood for 50 years.
“I was sitting with my son in the den, and we heard this loud noise, and I said, ‘what was that?’”
“He said it sounded like a truck hit a tree, and I said it sounded like a house was demolished to me,” Thompson said.
“I’ve always been a little concerned because they fly over my house pretty low all the time,” she said. “Seems like, lately, they’re getting lower and louder.”
The incident happened around 7:45 p.m., Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Kathleen Bergen said.
The plane was en route to the Chamblee airfield from Hilton Head, S.C., when it lost power, she said.
According to FAA records, the plane is a single-engine Cessna built in 1965. It has a corporate registration and is based out of Marietta.
--Staff photographer Curtis Compton and dispatch editor Angel K. Brooks contributed to this article.
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