Story by The Hartford Courant’s Kelly Glista and David Owens
Four bodies have been recovered after an airplane crashed into two homes Friday morning while trying to land at Tweed-New Haven Airport, officials said.
The pilot, his son and two children who were inside the home at 64 Charter Oak Ave. have been found dead, officials confirmed Saturday morning.
Sadie Brantley, 13, and Madisyn Mitchell, 1, were in the house, officials said. Their mother, Joann Mitchell, 39, was also in the home at the time the plane crashed into it, but escaped, officials said.
The pilot was Bill Henningsgaard, a Medina, Wash., resident who was traveling with his son, according to Astoria (Ore.) Mayor Willis Van Dusen, the Daily Astorian newspaper of Oregon reported Friday.
The medical examiner will be conducting autopsies Saturday, officials said.
In a news conference Friday night, a National Transportation Safety Board official said there were likely four to six people dead as a result of the crash.
Gov. Dannel Malloy said Friday afternoon that two children, ages 1 and 13, were in one of the houses. Officials in East Haven said the children’s mother was in her house, 64 Charter Oak Ave., at the time the plane crashed into it, but escaped.
The crash also damaged a neighboring house, at 68 Charter Oak Ave. According to East Haven Fire Chief Douglas F. Jackson, the home was empty when the plane crashed.
A Scottish terrier found on the street was identified Saturday morning as belonging to the family at 64 Charter Oak, according to East Haven Animal Control officials. They said the dog will be fine.
A crane was being brought in Saturday to remove the plane, officials said. It will be taken to a secure location for further investigation.
Several witnesses reported hearing the plane’s engines stop before the crash.
The Daily Astorian newspaper of Oregon reported Friday that the pilot was Bill Henningsgaard, a Medina, Wash., resident who was traveling with his son, according to Astoria (Ore.) Mayor Willis Van Dusen.
When reached by phone, Henningsgaard’s brother, Blair Henningsgaard, said he hadn’t received official confirmation but suspected his brother and nephew were aboard the plane that crashed into two houses in East Haven. “We have no reason to believe it was anybody else’s plane,” he told The Seattle Times.
A statement posted to the website for Social Venture Partners, a Seattle-based organization of philanthropists with which Bill Henningsgaard was affiliated, said he and his son, Maxwell Henningsgaard, were killed in a plane crash. The father and son were on a trip to the East Coast to visit colleges, according to the statement.
Residents up and down Charter Oak Avenue gave mixed information about the family members at 64 Charter Oak, who were relatively recent arrivals to the neighborhood.
By Friday afternoon, an official with the state medical examiner’s office arrived at the scene.
“We are doing everything we possibly can for the mom,” East Haven Mayor Joseph Maturo said. “Our hearts go out to her and her family.”
Maturo said Friday afternoon that the bodies of the pilot and a child had been located. On Friday night, a tanker arrived to begin pumping water out of the basement of the home where the children had been living. A state urban search-and-rescue team also arrived at the scene.
The plane was inverted in the wreckage, with the one wing in each of the damaged houses, Robert Gretz of the NTSB said. A large part of the plane was in the basement of 64 Charter Oak, he said. Fifty to 60 percent of the plane was consumed by fire after the crash, he said.
Officials said Henningsgaard was set to land on Tweed’s Runway 2 using an instrument landing, but missed the first approach and attempted a second before the crash.
The cloud ceiling in the area at the time of the crash was only about 900 feet, FOX CT meteorologistRachel Frank said. A light rain was falling and winds were coming from the south at about 14 mph, with gusts up to 22 mph, Frank said.
Officials said there was no distress call from the plane, which the Federal Aviation Administrationdescribed as a Rockwell International Turbo Commander 690B, a multiengine turboprop aircraft. The plan was traveling from Teterboro Airport in northern New Jersey.
The plane is registered to Ellumax Leasing LLC in Washington; the company had no comment. Henningsgaard is listed as the registered agent of Ellumax, The Seattle Times said.
The NTSB, state and local agencies, and representatives from both the plane’s engine and frame manufacturers will be at the scene of the crash Saturday, Gretz said.
On Friday, a number of neighbors at the scene in East Haven said the sound of the plane’s engine stopped moments before the crash.
Robert Mallory, an airplane mechanic who lives nearby on Haines Street, said Friday that he knew the plane was in trouble from the sound of its motor. “It just didn’t sound right,” he said. “It sounded like someone stuck a stick in a lawn mower. It just stopped.”
After the plane crashed, Mallory jumped in his car and raced to Charter Oak Avenue, where he saw the houses on fire. The front lawns were strewn with pieces of airplane, and a woman was outside. “The woman was screaming about her children,” he said. “They didn’t get out.”
Mallory said that several people entered the burning house, trying to save the children.
Dennis Karjanis of New Haven said he was driving down Charter Oak Avenue with his nephew when they saw the plane spiraling toward the ground.
A moment later, they arrived in front of 64 Charter Oak. As Karjanis dialed 911, his nephew and two others tried to go into the house, he said.
The mother was outside. “The woman was on the front lawn screaming and yelling in English and Spanish,” Karjanis said. “She was pleading, ‘please get my kids.'”
Three men, including Karjanis’ nephew, went into the house but could not get far. The aircraft had ripped up the inside of the house, he said.
“She kept screaming ‘Get my kids,'” Karjanis said of the mother. The three men asked where the kids were and the woman kept pointing at the house.
Within a minute, the airplane began to burn.
“The plane exploded so quickly, there was no hope,” he said.
Frank Diglio said he was driving by the crash site and saw the woman crying. Diglio, 55, said he and another man entered the house and tried digging through the rubble to find the children, but were forced to leave after 10 minutes when the fire at the house became intense.
“The plane was burning slow and then it started really burning,” Diglio said. “The fire engines arrived in like 10 minutes. They came real quick and they told us all to move. The house got really out of control.”
Diglio said he was hoping to rescue the children.
“I’m crying now because I couldn’t find them,” he said.
Debbie Brunelle of Hughes Street, a block from Charter Oak, said she, her husband, Steve, who is an East Haven firefighter, and their son Stephen Jr., a volunteer firefighter, were home when the plane crashed.
“I heard this plane come in, like I always do,” she said. “All of a sudden it stopped. I should have kept hearing it, and I heard a bang. It sounded like something would have fallen off. My son and husband took off.”
Brunelle said they drove around the block to the scene, where they heard a woman screaming. “When I got down there I heard her. She was saying two kids were in the house,” she said. “When we got down there the plane was exploding. You could just hear explosions and see the orange fire. It was horrific.”
Another Hughes Street resident, Rose, who declined to give her last name, said she was in the basement doing laundry when she heard the crash. Her house backs up to the homes on Charter Oak that were hit.
Rose said she didn’t hear a plane fly overhead, just the sound of the crash. “I just heard this explosion. The whole house shook,” she said. “I didn’t hear anything before I heard the crash. I heard nothing. Just the impact.”
Francisca Guzman, who lives on Charter Oak Avenue about 300 yards from crash site, said she also heard the crash. “I heard a loud bang, like something fell hard,” she said. “After that I heard sounds like a firecracker. It was popping. Pop pop pop pop.”
Antoinette Hernandez lives even closer to the crash site. Her daughter knew the two children who are missing and broke down sobbing when told they were unaccounted for.
Hernandez, who also heard the crash, said she thinks planes have been flying over the neighborhood ever lower, and also questioned proposals to expand Tweed, a regional airport that handles both general and commercial flights, including 36,971 passengers in 2012. “You can actually see the pilots’ faces as they’re coming down,” Hernandez said.
At the Friday evening news conference, Malloy said the plane’s path was “the normal instrument-assisted flight path” for planes approaching Tweed.
New Haven Mayor John DeStefano said many questions remain, but Friday was for focusing on the loss of life. “It’s just a tragedy for the family,” he said.
The street in front of the houses was a jumble of hoses, fire engines and emergency personnel Friday afternoon. Neighbors hung off porches or stood behind police lines, seeking a glimpse of the burned homes. Half of one house was gone, the front of the car in its driveway scorched by the fire. About a quarter of the neighboring home’s roof was missing.
Jackson, the East Haven fire chief, said the two houses were burning and the plane was between them when firefighters involved.
Charter Oak Avenue resident Beverly Nappe said she was on her back porch when she heard a bang.
“I thought it was work on the Q Bridge,” she said.
Nappe looked toward the sound of the bang and saw black smoke. Firetrucks arrived within seconds.
“We heard a big crash and my mom called me outside and there was smoke everywhere outside,” said Nappe’s granddaughter, Kayla Smith, 11.
Hernandez and others praised the East Haven and New Haven fire departments and other emergency personnel for the swift response to crash.
“I have to give it to New Haven and East Haven,” she said. “They were here fast.”
Maturo said clergy members in the town are planning a vigil for the victims at Margaret Tucker Park on Saturday at 7 p.m.
Courant reporters Hilda Muñoz, Denise Buffa and Alaine Griffin, and freelance writer Christopher Hoffman, contributed to this story.