3 killed as plane crashes on Texas road during emergency landing attempt, officials say

All three people aboard a small airplane were killed Sunday after it crashed on a Texas road during an emergency landing, fire officials say.

The single-engine plane took off from Sugar Land airport near Houston and was headed roughly 220 miles west to Boerne when it began to experience engine trouble, KSAT reported. The pilot sent out an alert indicating he would attempt to land the plane at San Antonio International Airport, fire officials said.

The plane crashed short of the runway in the 600 block of W. Rhapsody Drive, killing the two men and one woman on board, according to the outlet.

The road is home to a number of warehouses and businesses and officials say the crash could have been even worse, WOAI reported.

“Units arrived and found the plane almost on the sidewalk, kind of the sidewalk, half of the street,” Fire Chief Charles Hood told the outlet. “There were no commercial buildings hit, no apartment complexes,” adding that the plane could have “have dropped on [U.S.] 281, it could have dropped on an apartment complex. As tragic as it is, it could have been much worse.”

Hood said crews conducted a 20-block scan of the area to ensure no pieces of the plane had broken off and hit any structures, KSAT reported. No other injuries were reported.

People near the crash site saw a plane “quickly descending” into the area just before a loud sound, the San Antonio Express-News reported.

“I saw the plane come over and it just took a nosedive and crashed,” area resident Sheila Cleckler told WOAI. “It made like a little whirly sound. They were asking me if it sounded like it hit anything, and besides the ground, I couldn’t hear anything. But it made a whoosh sound when it was diving.”

“It was really loud,” another area resident, Anzleigh Bryant, 14, told the Express-News.. “I don’t know how to describe it. I just began thinking. ‘What’s going on? What’s happening?’ ”

According to Flight Aware, the plane is a Piper PA-24 Comanche, the Express-News reported.

The incident is under investigation and Hood says fire officials will coordinate with the National Transportation Safety Board and Federal Aviation Administration to continue the investigation and remove the plane, according to the newspaper.