Five killed in crash of small plane

Aircraft was headed to college football game

ATLANTA — A small plane en route to a college football playoff game crashed into the parking lot of a post office in Louisiana shortly after takeoff on Saturday, killing the daughter-in-law of one of the team’s coaches and four others on board.

The two-engine Piper Cheyenne crashed in the city of Lafayette about a mile from the regional airport where the flight began, Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Tony Molinaro said.

Five of the six people on board were killed, said Lafayette Fire Chief Robert Benoit. The sixth person was being treated at an area hospital along with two people who were in the post office, he said. Steven Ensminger Jr., son of the offensive coordinator for the Louisiana State University football team, said his wife, Carley McCord, was on board the flight and died. He said the plane was en route to the Peach Bowl playoff game in Atlanta between LSU and Oklahoma.

Ensminger said he was unable to go to the game and was at work when the crash happened. He said his father, Steven Ensminger, called him just before the elder Ensminger got to the stadium. The coach had tears in his eyes when he appeared on the field at the start of the game Saturday afternoon.

“I just don’t feel like this is real,” Ensminger Jr. told the AP in an Instagram message. “I’m praying it’s not real.”

The eight-passenger plane went down in a part of the city with a scattering of banks, fast-food chains and other businesses.

Marty Brady, 22, said the lights went out at his apartment a couple of hundred yards or so away from the crash site as he was preparing to make coffee.

He said he ran out and saw black smoke and flames from the post office parking lot and downed power lines.

Kevin Jackson told KLFY-TV he heard a “massive explosion” and saw a “big old ball of flame” when the plane crashed. He and other witnesses told the TV station that the plane hit a car and that someone could be heard screaming inside the vehicle.

McCord was a Baton Rouge native and sports reporter for WDSU-TV in New Orleans, according to her website. She also appeared as a sideline reporter for ESPN. McCord previously worked in television in Cleveland, and she was a two-time runner-up in the Miss Louisiana pageant.

Scott Clause The Associated Press TV reporter Carley McCord, center, was one of five killed Saturday in a plane crash in Lafayette, Louisiana. McCord, interviewing a high school coach Dec. 14, was the daughter-in-law of Louisiana State University offensive coordinator Steven Ensminger.