A 12-year-old girl was the first to spring into action when a small plane crashed into a river in eastern Nebraska Friday night and killed all three people on board, according to a report.
Paisley Fenner, who had never dialed 911 before the fatal crash, made the initial alert to emergency services when the ill-fated Cessna 180 plunged into Platte River in Fremont around 8:15 p.m., KETV reported.
“It was like a boom and you could hear the impact when it landed,” Fenner told the local outlet.
“We stepped outside, and we were like, ‘That’s an airplane.’ And then my first instinct initially was just ‘Call 911.’ That’s just my first instinct. I’ve never had to do that before, but I knew that was what I needed to do.”
Fenner then described a harrowing scene with her neighbors loading their airboats and rounding up their dogs to assist rescue efforts as the wrecked aircraft floated in the water.
The youngster said she’s still processing the deadly crash — never thinking she would experience such a traumatic incident in her own backyard.
“Yesterday we were still all in shock and we were still trembling, crying, and shaking,” Fenner told the outlet on Saturday.
“And today, it’s still kinda the same way and we’re still trying to fathom what happened. I’ve seen it on the news and stuff, plane crashes, but I didn’t think it would happen in my backyard.”
The plane victims were identified as Fremont residents Jeff Bittinger, 50, and Randy Aemrein, 48, and Daniel Williams, 43, of Moundridge, Kansas, the Dodge County Sheriff’s Office announced Saturday.
The Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board will investigate Friday’s incident, the latest in a series of deadly aircraft emergencies in the past few months.
The cause of the crash is unknown.
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