A small jet carrying four people crashed on takeoff Thursday morning from a small airport in central Connecticut and hit a building, setting it on fire. There was no immediate word on the extent of the injuries to those aboard.
The small jet took off just before 10 a.m. from the Robertson Airport before crashing into the building at Trumpf Inc., a manufacturing company, Farmington Police Lt. Tim McKenzie said.
“There was some type of trouble in the air,” he said. “The plane impacted the ground first and then hit the building.”
The jet, a Cessna Citation 560X, was headed to Dare County Regional Airport in Manteo, North Carolina, the Federal Aviation Administration said. Four people were on board, the agency said.
Everybody who was inside the Trumpf building has been accounted for, McKenzie said. He said nobody was taken to the hospital from the crash.
Farmington is in central Connecticut, about 10 miles (16 kilometers) southwest of the state capital of Hartford.
McKenzie said an intense fire burned for over 20 minutes.
Caleb Vaichaus, who works near the crash site, said he ran to the scene after hearing a loud explosion and seeing billows of black smoke from the Trumpf building.
“As I got even closer I saw pieces of what looked like fuselage, metal, strewn throughout the road over here and in the grass over here,” he told WTIC-TV. “I ran straight toward it to see if I could help. I got as close as I possibly could and the flames were extremely hot and the fire was just getting bigger. It kind of looked like you could see the tail of the airplane sticking out. So any passengers or any movement, I couldn’t see anything like that in the area.”
Please check back on WSVN.com and 7News for more details on this developing story.
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