HORRIFIC

Small Plane’s Fiery Crash on Busy Florida Highway Captured on Dash Cam

Three people aboard the aircraft walked out of the fiery wreckage, but the crash killed both its pilots, authorities said.

New video shows the impact of a small jet that slammed into southwest Florida’ Interstate 75 on Friday, going up in a ball of fire and killing both pilots aboard. The footage, captured by a trucker’s dash camera and shared with journalist Elyse Chengery, shows the plane descending rapidly over the highway and hitting a concrete wall. Another video shared with NBC7 South Florida shows three survivors aboard the aircraft walking out of the wreckage, telling a driver who’d pulled over that they believed the pilots were still inside. The victims were later identified by the Collier County Sheriff’s Office as pilot Edward Daniel Murphy, 50, and his second-in-command Ian Frederick Hofmann, 65. The three survivors, a crew member and two passengers from Columbus, Ohio, were treated for their injuries at a nearby hospital. The plane, a Bombardier Challenger 600, was traveling from Columbus to Naples, Florida and had been scheduled to land around the time of the crash, a Naples Airport Authority spokesperson told NBC6. The crash remains under investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board, but audio released over the weekend revealed that the pilots had declared an emergency in the moments before the crash, telling air traffic control that they’d “lost both engines.”