A three-minute audio has revealed the final moments of a pilot who crashed his plane into a Florida mobile home, killing several people.
The plane, a single-engine Beechcraft Bonanza V35 that took off from Vero Beach, crashed in a Bayside Waters mobile home park in Clearwater at 7pm on Thursday.
Martha Parry, 86, a resident of a double-wide mobile home, and 54-year-old Mary Ellen Pender, a visitor, were killed along with the plane’s pilot, 54-year-old Jemin Patel. Although the flames were quickly doused, at least three other homes were damaged in the fire resulting from the accident.
Shortly before the crash, Patel radioed in a Mayday distress call, alerting that his plane had lost engines.
“They went down hard. They’re in flames,” another pilot who witnessed the crash is heard saying in the call, FOX 13 reported. “He is definitely into a house, a whole house is demolished… I just saw him going down at an extremely high rate of speed.”
Images posted online by the Clearwater Fire & Rescue Department showed flames that engulfed parts of the park, as smoke billowed from the damaged homes.