A California woman was struck by an airplane in a soccer field during an attempted emergency landing that went horribly wrong.
The unsuspecting victim was walking through Heartwell Park in Long Beach when the small aircraft hit her on Tuesday, around 4pm local time.
Harrowing images from the crash shared by the Long Beach Fire Department depicted the aftermath of the plane, which had American Flag-themed wings, on its belly with broken landing gears.
One of its wings was completely snapped off, with debris scattered around the fallen aircraft.
First responders rushed to the scene, taking the woman in her 40s and the elderly male pilot to the hospital.
They both sustained moderate injuries but are in stable condition, authorities said.
KTLA5 reported the pilot may have been attempting an emergency landing at Long Beach Airport, which is just about a mile and a half away from the park, when he crashed.
The glider may have also been an experimental aircraft, according to the outlet.
The fire department said the plane had left from Compton that morning and flown to the French Valley.
The accident occurred when the aircraft was headed back to Compton, according to preliminary reports.
Footage from the scene showed investigators probing the area as witnesses looked on in disbelief.
Long Beach Mayor Rex Richardson addressed the terrifying incident in a statement on Tuesday night.
‘When something like this happens in a place so central to our community life, it hits close to home,’ he wrote.
He also spoke about the crash during a city council meeting on Tuesday night, according to the Los Angeles Times.
And we are fortunate in that there have been no fatalities, no serious injuries,’ Richardson said, noting that it could have been ‘a whole lot worse.’
‘It was a glider [that] did an emergency landing, pretty rough landing on the field at Heartwell Park,’ he said.
The cause of the plane’s plummeting into the soccer field is under an ongoing investigation.
This incident came just days after a United Airlines flight was forced to make an emergency landing after the plane’s windscreen shattered.
Flight 1093 had taken off from Denver, Colorado, and was headed to Los Angeles, California, when a layer of the cockpit’s main window cracked on Thursday.
The Boeing 737 Max 8, carrying 134 customers and six crew members, then diverted to Salt Lake City.
Photos showed what appeared to be cuts on the pilot’s arm as well as shards of glass on the aircraft’s control board.
United Airlines told the Daily Mail in a statement that all travelers were later taken to Los Angeles on another plane.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has launched an investigation into the incident.
Culled from Daily Mail
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