Detroit homeowner wants wreckage of a small plane crash removed from her backyard
DETROIT (CBS DETROIT) - Federal investigators combed through the mangled single-engine plane Thursday less than 24 hours after its pilot crash-landed in Nytia Stafford's backyard.
She was trying to fall asleep moments before the single-engine Progressive Aerodyne SeaRey plane came down.
"I barely got sleep last night," Stafford said. "I opened my eyes, and then that's when I heard all the commotion. So I looked outside, and I seen everybody just been rushing back here, and I'm like, 'okay, what's going on?'"
The impact tore tree limbs and clipped Stafford's garage but missed her house and others on Duchess Street near Morang Avenue.
"I was kind of shocked that it happened so close because it actually nicked the trees up before it crashed landed. So that was, I mean, that's God," Omar Johnson, a neighbor, said.
The pilot and passenger left the scene Wednesday evening without serious injuries.
"I mean to go through something like that and just walk away like nothing ever happened. That's unbelievable," Terry Mitchell, who lives in the neighborhood, said.
According to data from FlightAware, the pair took off from the Oakland Troy airport just before 6 p.m.
They did a couple of laps around the western side of the Metro and flew to Lake Saint Clair before running into trouble in East Detroit.
"It was a lot of drama in like a four-minute span because everybody's like, where's his plane coming from? Then we all thought about like, 'oh, yeah, the airport is probably maybe 10 minutes away,'" Nick Pulliam, who witnessed the plane crash, told CBS News Detroit.
The plane is registered to a company whose owner lives in Grosse Pointe Shores. CBS News Detroit reached out to him without any luck.
But his wife, in a message to CBS News Detroit, advised him not to talk with an 'investigation in process' and the insurance company also looking into the crash.
In the meantime, Stafford is left to deal with the wreckage.
"How are they going to get it out, because I'm ready for it to go now," Stafford said.
A spokesperson with the NTSB said their investigation will be done in about three to six months and added the plane's insurance company usually handles any wreckage removal.