Plane crashes in packed park; pilot dies

LAKE WORTH, Fla. (WSVN) --  A South Florida pilot dies after his plane went down in flames at a park packed with people.

"It was loud," said Robert Ginebra. "It was a loud boom." Ginebra was fishing in a small pond in John Prince Park in Lake Worth when he heard a strange sound in the sky. "I hear a weird noise in the sky from the plane," said Ginebra. "I take a look, and I see the plane, and it looked like they were struggling a little bit. The left engine went out, and it was kind of walking in the air."

Officials said the small Cessna had just taken off from a nearby airport when the engines failed. The pilot, who was alone on the plane, did not survive.

Witnesses said the plane came down fast. "The left propellor stopped spinning," said Ginebra. "The right propellor was engaged and kept spinning and it kind of made the plane go straight up in the air and then just straight nose-dived into a complete fireball."

Andrew Thompson and his son saw smoke from the highway, so they went to see it for themselves. "I thought it was just a building that caught on fire or something," said Andrew Thompson. "All of a sudden, it was too black of a smoke for it to be something."

It was a sad day in a cozy park. The loss of a life left witnesses reflecting. "That's a death over there, and it's really sad," said Andrew Thompson. "I can't imagine what he was going through in the last moments before it hit."

Police don't have a lot of detail on the accident. They said it was a Cessna 421 and they believe it lost power shortly after takeoff.

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