Plane crashes in front yard of Arvada home, neighbors pull victims from wreckage

DENVER ( KDVR ) — A plane crashed into the front yard of an Arvada home Friday morning, hitting multiple objects on the way down and sending four passengers to the hospital.

Officers received reports of the crash around 9:30 a.m., according to the Arvada Police Department . On scene, they found that a plane struck a fence and tree at Oberon Road and Balsam Street before crashing into the yard of a home at the corner of Oberon Road and Brentwood Street.

The plane burst into flames after crashing, and the injuries to the plane’s four passengers included burns, Alex Lemishko, a senior accident investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board, said. Two of the four people taken to the hospital were adults. It was not clear yet whether the other two people were adults or children, he said — although Arvada Fire said earlier in the day that two of the people hurt were juveniles.

Witnesses told FOX31 that neighbors helped pull people out of the plane. No one in the home, which is on a street running parallel to railroad tracks, was hurt, Lemishko said.

The 1969 Beechcraft 35 crashed about 15 minutes after taking off from Centennial Airport south of Denver, apparently headed to another suburban airport about 30 miles to the northwest, Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport, Lemishko said.

Randy Hamrick and his wife live in the home where the plane crashed. They were inside at the time, and their first thought was a train derailed from the track across the street.

“We saw the explosion and the glow from the outside and said, well, wait a second,” Hamrick told FOX31’s Nate Belt .

Then he thought the house was collapsing.

“It felt like it was falling in. I mean, it was just that violent,” he said.

Pilot calls in emergency landing before Arvada crash

The unidentified pilot radioed that he was experiencing engine problems shortly before the crash and planned to land at Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport, which was probably visible from the air by then, Lemishko said.

According to Arvada Fire, the pilot called into a Jefferson County air traffic control tower and asked for an emergency landing after seeing a low oil pressure light. Minutes later, another call came in reporting extreme power loss. The pilot told the tower that they were not going to make it and they would have to “put it down” somewhere, as can be heard on air traffic control recordings.

Shortly after, the tower lost contact with the plane — which is when witnesses started to report seeing a low-flying plane teetering side to side in Arvada.

The pilot tried to land in the street in the residential neighborhood, Lemishko said. The plane’s left wing hit a large spruce tree, and the plane skidded down the roadway and veered into the yard, he said. The plane also hit a pickup truck parked on the street in front of the home, pushing the truck up into the home’s driveway into another truck, Arvada Fire spokesperson Deanna Harrington said.

A roadway or even railroad tracks is a reasonable option for a pilot to try to land if they cannot make it to an airport, Lemishko said.

“I’m sure what was going through the pilot’s mind was ‘I see a roadway, I need to get this aircraft down, let’s give it a shot,’” he said.

Arvada plane crash: Witness describes the scene

Evan Sherlock told FOX31 he was driving in Arvada to get mulch for his front yard when he saw a plane flying extremely low, weaving back and forth and dipping wings. When he looked in his rearview mirror and realized the plane was gone, he made a U-turn and found plane debris in the front yard of a home.

“I couldn’t believe that’s what I just saw. I was hoping that it was doing something else,” Sherlock said. “I could see smoke coming out of it, and at first it looked like a crop duster to me. And then I was like, there’s no way — why would you be crop dusting in Arvada? But obviously, something was mechanically wrong with the airplane, and it was just entirely too low for it to be doing anything safe.”

As seen in pictures, the crashed plane started to smoke and caused a fire, which was quickly extinguished. But the wreckage caught fire again a few hours later, not long after the perimeter was taken down.

FOX31’s Ashley Michels reported that news crews and onlookers were within feet of the wreckage when it ignited for the second time. Fire crews hit the flames with water and eventually had to use a fire extinguisher.

FOX31’s Vicente Arenas was on the scene just after 4 p.m. when crews hoisted the plane’s engine from the crash site. Crews remained on the scene to continue processing the wreckage.

Back at the home where the plane crashed, Hamrick said he and his wife are thankful that the passengers in the plane are being treated at the hospital and hope they make a full recovery.

“Me and the wife have even talked about maybe going up and checking on them tomorrow in person actually,” he said.

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to FOX21 News Colorado.