A man in a car also was injured when the plane crashed near an interstate overpass a short distance from Boca Raton Airport in Florida, the authorities said.
Three people were killed when a small plane crashed near the airport in Boca Raton, Fla., on Friday, officials said, sending large plumes of smoke billowing into the air as residents reported hearing a thunderous crashing sound.
The three people who died were all on board the Cessna plane when it crashed just after 10 a.m., said Michael LaSalle, an assistant chief and public information officer with the Boca Raton Fire Rescue.
A fourth person on the ground was treated for non-life threatening injuries after he drove through the “fireball” from the crash and hit a tree and sustained non-life threatening injuries, Chief LaSalle said. The plane’s pilot reported “mechanical issues” just before the crash, he said, adding that investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board were on their way to the scene to investigate.
Footage from television news showed debris on a set of train tracks beneath a highway overpass. The Boca Raton police said a major section of Interstate 95 had been closed near the crash site. Flightradar24, a flight tracking site, captured a dizzying flight pattern as the plane looped and zigzagged around the Boca Raton area. It took off around 10:15 a.m. local time from Boca Raton Airport and was headed to Tallahassee, Fla., according to the site.
The plane is a Cessna 310R, built in 1977, according to registry data from the Federal Aviation Administration. That model seats four to six people. The identities of the victims were not immediately made public.
A business manager at the airport said shortly after the crash that the airport had closed because of an “aircraft incident.” The airport, which mainly operates private and charter flights, had reopened by noon.
Tri-Rail, a commuter rail system, said that service had been affected between the Deerfield Beach and Boca Raton stations because of the crash.
Lorenzo Echeverria, a pilot and flight instructor who lives about a mile from the airport, had just returned from a morning run when he heard what sounded like an “abnormally loud” propeller plane
At first he thought it might be a military aircraft or a bigger propeller plane, but when he checked a flight tracker app, he saw that the plane appeared to be flying in a random pattern that was “all over the place” at around 200 feet, “which is extremely abnormal,” Mr. Echeverria said. Planes are restricted to flying least 1,000 feet over congested areas, he said.
“Even someone with a special flight permit wouldn’t be able to do that type of thing,” he said. “Right then and there I knew something was wrong.”
Mr. Echeverria did not hear the crash because of his hurricane-proof windows, he said, but the next thing he knew, there was a large black plume of smoke.
