Two dead after plane crashes into Florida mobile homes

A small plane crashed into a South Florida mobile home park, killing the pilot and another person on the ground, the National Transportation Safety Board said on Wednesday.

The crash was reported to Palm Beach County Fire Rescue on Tuesday night after witnesses saw the aircraft drop out of the sky.

Surveillance video showed the plane banking and zooming down from the sky before it crashed, sending a column of black smoke into the air.

It “swayed side to side like sputtering for gas and all the sudden dropped and then blew up,” witness Arthur Grimes told the Palm Beach Post.

NTSB investigator Daniel Boggs said the pilot made no distress calls before the Piper Cherokee 180 plane flying from Orlando to Lantana, near West Palm Beach, went down.

No one else was aboard the plane, said Boggs, who did not identify the pilot or the other crash victim during a news conference.

The crash set two mobile homes ablaze and destroyed the plane, officials said.

“We’re very fortunate it was in a mobile home park and that it (the damage) wasn’t larger,” Boggs said.

Zachary Fagenson, MIAMI (Reuters)