There was trouble in the sky when a pilot made a rough landing into a Central Florida neighborhood.
For Sylvia Madero, who has called Winter Haven home for the past 30 years, it’s not uncommon to hear sports games from a high school across the street or from a regional airport a few miles away.
But nothing could have prepared her family for what they heard while inside their home, Saturday afternoon.
“We heard a little boom or whatever, and my daughter was like, ‘Mom, there’s a plane crash in front of the house,'” said Madero. “She sent me a picture and a video, and I was somewhere else, but I heard the boom.”
They came outside to find a mangled mess right on their street: a crashed airplane glider surrounded by debris, its battery exposed.
“It looks like it’s intact, the front part. The back, I don’t know where that is,” said Madero.
Police said one person, the pilot, was on board when somehow the glider crashed. It’s unclear which airport it came from or was headed to.
The pilot survived but was airlifted to the hospital with critical injuries.
Police investigated all day Saturday, as they attempted to determine what caused the crash.
Madero said she’s grateful no one on the ground was injured.
“It looks like maybe they were aiming for the field or something, but they didn’t create any damage on our street, you know?” she said.
It’s unclear whether or not the plane knocked out any power lines. Utility crews were in the area, but Madero said she never lost power.
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