BATON ROUGE, La.–Just what caused a Mississippi pilot’s plane to crash into a neighborhood in Baker, La., near Baton Rouge is still unclear today. The crash happened Friday afternoon, just a few moments after 72-year-old John Fowler of Brookhaven left the Baton Rough airport.
The neighborhood where he crashed was just four miles from the airport. The scene was obvious from miles away as flames shot into the air. Part of the plane could be seen in the backyard of one of the homes, landed on a trampoline where children normally play. No one else was seriously besides Fowler, who died in the crash.
“I didn’t know how big the plane was, I was just trying to get everybody out the back door,” said Kendrick Dale, who was in one of the houses hit. He talked with news station ABC 2 in Baton Rouge.
Dale said he could see the twin engine plane coming down. That was about 1 p.m.
“For the families we send out condolences,” said Baker Mayor Kip Holden. “For the people that are here we are trying to repair any mental or psychological damage that has been done.”
The investigation will be handled by the National Transportation Safety Board. It may take months to find out exactly what happened. That agency normally issues a preliminary report and then the final results sometime later.
