No serious injuries in small plane crash
Twin-engine craft hits occupied home in Groton
GROTON — Breathtaking stories like the one Ken Johnson has to tell — involving a twinengine PA-34 Piper Seneca crashing through his roof into his living room Monday night — often include fiery outcomes, multiple fatalities and tearful funerals.
But whether this one was just “pure luck,” as Johnson termed it, or “a miracle,” as his daughter and several neighbors along Ring Drive near Donna Drive in Groton all described it, that wasn’t the case this time with the plane that crashed en route from Maine to Groton-New London Airport.
And for that, everyone in the neighborhood was supremely thankful.
This time, no one died. In fact, no one appeared to have been seriously injured.
Johnson, whose family has had more than its share of troubles in recent years, lives on — and has a story to tell that very few people can match.
While Johnson is convinced he just got lucky — lucky enough that he worries he may have used up his allotment — his daughter, Tammy de la Cruz, and a number of neighbors who saw the crash Monday night or its aftermath, have all offered another theory.
“It’s a miracle,” said de la Cruz, who is married to state Rep. Joe de la Cruz, D-Groton, sitting in a chair across Ring Drive from the house Tuesday morning.
“I said to my dad, ‘There’s an angel that’s on your shoulder,’” said Tammy de la Cruz, who was admittedly pretty hysterical Monday night as she ran from her house about a block away after failing to reach her dad on the phone after hearing the crash.
“I would say it’s a miracle,” she said moments later, reaffirming her earlier pronouncement. “It is a miracle!”
“Miracle? Divine Intervention? It was not their time to go,” said neighbor Richard Foreman, a local 911 dispatcher, who spoke to the pilot Monday night after he and his passenger also walked away from the crash.
“I think it’s a miracle,” said neighbor Russell Thompson as he took a walk to see the wreckage in the light with his son, T’Aundre, 8. “It’s a miracle, for sure.”
The crash — and whatever it was that kept folks from being killed or injured — was a shock to all involved.
No one was more surprised, of course, than Johnson, 73, who was sleeping at the time of the 10:30 p.m. crash. He ended up crawling out his rear bedroom window after he realized part of his roof had caved in — but before he totally figured out what had just happened.
“Oh, my God!” Johnson recalled saying when he opened his bedroom door and saw that the ceiling down the hall had come down.
He didn’t see the airplane in his living room until he got out of the house.
“I was asleep in bed and I heard a bang — and at first I thought somebody had broken in my front,” Johnson said, standing along the side and rear of the house Tuesday morning, wearing a “Myrtle Beach” ball cap, as TV crews interviewed his daughter in front.
Once he realized that the other end of the one-story ranch house was smashed, he closed the bedroom door, opened the window and got out of there — with only a sore throat, which he attributed to breathing the aircraft fuel fumes, to show for the crash.
“Pure luck!” he said. “Pure luck!”
Johnson , who is insured, said he was “in no hurry to die” and “I’m in even less of a hurry after this.
“All I can say is, for an old guy, I got out of that window pretty quickly,” he said.
The flight had been scheduled to take off from Augusta, Maine, at 8:37 p.m. Monday and land at Groton-New London Airport at 10:27 p.m. Monday, a 258-mile trip, according to flight plan information posted at FlightAware.com.
The plane, owned by Upgrade Inc., earlier had flown from Groton-New London to Bangor, Maine, leaving Groton at 5:09 p.m. and and arriving in Bangor at 7:17 p.m., according to the website.
Upgrade could not immediately be contacted and the two occupants of the plane, said by neighbors at the scene to be a pilot and a flying student, had not been identified as of Tuesday afternoon, according to Groton police.
The crash came following a few tough years for Johnson, who lost his wife, Kathy, eight years ago and then saw his grandson, Joseph ‘Jo Jo Nice’ Gingerella — who after putting his life back together following bouts with addiction earlier in his life was fatally shot at age 24 while attempting to prevent the assault of a woman outside of a Groton bar on Dec. 11, 2016 — taken from him shortly thereafter.
Tammy de la Cruz, who is Gingerella’s mother, said she didn’t know what she would have done had she lost her father, too, but was glad he came through unscathed.
“I’ve had to much” in the way of sorrow and difficulties, she said. “I can’t imagine any more.”
Johnson “is in good shape for a 73-year-old,” she said. “He’s a young 73. He’s in better shape than I am.”
De la Cruz said she first became aware that there was a problem when “someone called me and said, “There’s a plane crash in your neighborhood.”
She immediately called her father, but got no answer. At that point, as she left to head to the house she grew up in, “I just said, ‘he’s gone,’” she said.
But he wasn’t gone — and the pilot and passenger in the plane made it out, too.
While Johnson seemed just fine Tuesday, “I think he’s still just in shock,” said his daughter. “I think the real emotion will come when they have to take the house down,” as she suspects will end up being the case, she said.
But “he’s a tough guy,” she said. “We can get through this.”
Police said the airplane’s two occupants were able to extricate themselves and were transported by ambulance to Lawrence + Memorial Hospital in New London.
The plane was approaching the airport when it crashed, according to the Connecticut Airport Authority, which oversees operations at the airport and is helping to investigate the accident. Officials did not say where the aircraft was coming from.
The National Transportation Safety Board said Tuesday afternoon it is investigating the crash.
“Investigators are not traveling to the scene. Wreckage is being removed to secure location for further examination,” it said in a tweet.
Shortly after 10:30 p.m., the Groton Emergency Communications Center received multiple calls reporting the plane crash on Ring Drive at Donna Drive.
Police said there was no structure fire as a result of the crash, but area homes were evacuated as a precautionary measure while fire crews and EMS attended to the scene.
The crash happened about 2.5 miles from the Groton/New London Airport.
Longtime neighbors said this is not the first time there has been a plane or helicopter crash in the neighborhood. One neighbor said she was aware of at least two others and Tammy de la Cruz said that a Cessna crashed in to a nearby open field right around 1983.
“I’m glad you weren’t hurt!” the neighbor told Johnson as he stood looking at the crashed airplane hanging off his roof.
“Me, too, Mary!” Johnson told her.
Across-the-street neighbor Sharon Rebein, who has known the Johnson family for half a century, can’t believe it wasn’t worse than it ended up being.
“I kept waiting for it to catch fire,” she said after giving Johnson a big hug. “I was sitting watching TV right in the front window” when she heard a loud crash, she said. “I thought a truck hit a pole.”
Rebein said another neighbor helped lead the two plane occupants out through Johnson’s front door “because the cockpit is in the living room.”
Neighbor Foreman, who was outside early Monday afternoon with his wife, Rebecca, and their daughter, Kaydence, 9, still can’t believe it wasn’t any worse.
“Look at the damage!” he said, standing in front of his house a couple of lots down the street. “Would expect anyone to walk out of that? All you can do is laugh about it.”
While Johnson may have had some bad luck, “he’s alive!” Foreman said. “Damage can be replaced.”
Neighbor Thompson called the crash “too close for comfort” and said, “I thought there would definitely be some fatalities. It could have been worse.”