3 injured when plane crashes through roof of Georgetown duplex

GEORGETOWN, Texas (KXAN) — A plane with three people on board crashed through the roof of a duplex Sunday in Georgetown.

The Georgetown Fire Department said the plane crash occurred just before noon in the 500 block of North Wood Drive, which is near the Georgetown Executive Airport.

GFD officials said luckily, it was an unoccupied duplex.

The Federal Aviation Administration confirmed it was a single-engine Beech BE35 plane and that the National Transportation Safety Board would lead the investigation into the crash.

GFD officials said the three people in the plane were taken to a hospital with injuries not considered life-threatening and were released later in the day.

Officials said Sunday the people onboard were coming back from having breakfast at Kerrville when the plane started to have engine failure. However, the plane’s flight history shows it took off from Georgetown’s airport at 9:26 a.m. and landed at the Gillespie County Airport at 9:57 a.m., taking off at 11:26 a.m. for Georgetown again. The Gillespie County Airport manager told KXAN they had stopped there for a “quick” lunch and didn’t refuel before taking off.

“Just veered away from the apartment complex behind you, and I believe he just had to make that split-second decision and ditched it into a single home instead,” City of Georgetown Battalion Chief Scott Gibson said.

KXAN spoke with a witness who went into the house to help pull the people — a man and two women — out of the wreckage.

“They were in really good condition considering what happened,” said Dylan King, who lives nearby and rushed to the scene to help. “They were scared, they didn’t know what was going on. They looked really confused. We had helped them down off the balcony and they were trying to jump through a hole in the roof. We opened the attic stairs and they got down that way.”

King’s sister-in-law, Breale Morton, said the passengers seemed to come out with minor injuries.

“They were limping,” Morton said. “But besides like blood and a few gashes and burnt feet from walking up on the roof, they were in pretty good condition.”

GFD officials said as far as the home, it’s not in that bad of shape.

“It is fairly minimally impacted. Probably the biggest concern is gonna be the fuel that has dripped from the attic to the first to the second floor,” said Gibson. “We’ve eliminated most of ignition sources that are around. We’ve cut the power to the house.”

Officials at the Georgetown Executive Airport, where the plane was supposed to land, had no comment on the crash. The FAA said a preliminary crash report will be done within 24 hours and posted on its website.

GFD officials said they will return to the scene Monday with the FAA and NTSB to assess the damage some more and try to remove the plane.