Plane Crash Today in Brazil: Medical Aircraft Crashes into House, Killing All 5 Passengers

A small medical plane crashed into a house in Brazil killing all five passengers on board.
Plane Crash Today in Brazil: Medical Aircraft Crashes into House, Killing All 5 Passengers
8/4/2014
Updated:
7/18/2015

A small medical plane crashed into a house in Brazil killing all five passengers on board.

According to BNOnews, the accident took placed at about 6:20 a.m. EDT on Sunday. A single-engine Embraer EMB-720C plane crashed into a house in Balsas, Maranhao, about 560 miles northeast of Brasilia, the capital of Brazil.

The plane was en route from Balsas to Teresina, the capital of the state of Piaui.

The passengers include an elderly patient and her relatives. They have been identified by the Brazil authorities as 87-year-old patient Maria de Jesus Cruz e Silva, 36-year-old pilot Delano Martins Coelho, his 22-year-old fiancée and nurse, Lorena Alves de Lima, Francisca Pereira e Silva, daughter of Maria, and grandson, Alan Patrick Silva Setulvedo.

According to state police, the tragedy occurred barely minutes after the plane took off from Balsas Airport. The aircraft crashed into a house about 984 feet from the runway.

“The plane was quiet, stopped and fell. Then I saw a flash,” said local resident Noé de Oliveira, as quoted by Brazilian newspaper O Globo.

The family of three in the house escaped the crash without injury thanks to a lucky incident.

Sabrina Ertel, 32, told the told the Folha de S. Paulo newspaper: “Our son asked, ‘Mom, let me sleep with you?’, and my husband said, ‘No, you have your own room.’ But he was sad, so I decided to get him and put his mattress in our room, and it was a miracle that saved his life.”

The bedroom that the 11-year-old son was supposed to sleep in was destroyed in the crash.

Balsas Mayor Luiz Rocha Filho declared three days of mourning for the victims.

 

 

Larry Ong is a New York-based journalist with Epoch Times. He writes about China and Hong Kong. He is also a graduate of the National University of Singapore, where he read history.
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