Brookhaven residents shaken by small plane crash in neighborhood
Residents of Brookhaven were alarmed by a loud boom around 12:22 a.m. on Saturday, Aug. 9, when a small plane crashed into the front yard of a home at the corner of Clairmont Road and 9th Street.
Whitney Beiner, who lives one house away from where the crash occurred, said she and her husband heard it loud and clear. Emergency vehicles were quick to respond.
“We heard the transformer explode, and then we heard the guy hollering for help. And at that point I was like, ‘Ryan, we have to do something,’” Beiner said. “I was about to [call 911], but we heard all the sirens coming.”
On Saturday afternoon, Georgia Power was making repairs, and a towing company from Griffin, GA, was on the scene removing pieces of the plane. The three passengers who sustained non-life-threatening injuries were taken to the hospital for treatment.
Robert Wojciechowski, a formerly licensed private pilot, posted on the community’s social media page that the airplane is a Piper owned by ALL2FLY flight school at Peachtree DeKalb Airport.
“They were coming in from RMG to PDK and looked to have been doing pattern work, lost engine power on the third iteration, and turned right and ditched on Clairmont and 9th,” Wojciechowski wrote, referring to the flight log.
Nina Barnett didn’t hear or feel the crash in her front yard, but was awakened by flashing lights outside. She walked outside to someone telling her, “A plane crashed in your yard.”
“I came out to see what’s going on out here because there was a lot of trash and debris in the yard,” she said.
Barnett, who had been without power for 12 hours, said her phone had been “ringing off the hook all day.” Her husband, William, built the ranch-style home in 1948, and the couple was married for 61 years. The house was not damaged in the crash.
Update at 3:50 p.m.: DeKalb County has confirmed the airplane was a Piper PA-28 (tail number N1080H) belonging to All2Fly Flight School, based at DeKalb-Peachtree Airport (PDK).
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