A witness who said he watched an Amazon cargo plane crash at Miami International Airport on Sunday called it a “traumatizing experience.”
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Romierkys Rodriguez is a truck driver who was working nearby when the plane went off the runway around 2 p.m.
“A horrific accident, we were there at the yard, and then out of nowhere we just, we could see a plane just coming down and just hear the boom, the explosion that happened, you could feel the shake, you could see the smoke coming out, the flames, just felt like a couple of feet away from us,” Rodriguez said. “A really horrific, traumatizing experience.”
Authorities said the plane had just arrived from San Juan, Puerto Rico, when it crashed off the runway, striking multiple vehicles and erupting in flames.
Five people were killed and another five were injured, including two with critical injuries.
“Everything just went chaotic as soon as the plane fell, people all around, smoke everywhere, it’s a horrific experience,” Rodriguez said. “I couldn’t get close enough because we were scared that the plane was going to blow up.”
Virginia Gardens Mayor Spencer Deno said he heard the crash and knew it was something serious.
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“Well, it was a little different than thunder and lightning. I felt it, my house shook, and I went and asked my wife, ‘did you feel that?’ She thought it was thunder or lightning. But I said, ‘no, that was a little different,'” Deno said. “It was a big boom. And about a minute or two later, I started hearing sirens. So I figured maybe it was a bad accident or some kind of explosion. So I got in my car and drove over to 36th Street and as soon as I got to Perimeter Road, I could see the tail of the plane sticking up and some of the white smoke coming up.”
Officials haven’t released the identities of the people who were killed or said whether they were on the plane or in the vehicles that were struck.
The pilot and copilot had been trapped in the cockpit and some people had been trapped in vehicles, officials said.
“You can imagine that plane could have been falling right on top of us,” Rodriguez said.
The Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board will be investigating the cause of the crash.
“Right now we’re a little bit traumatized, not feeling too good,” Rodriguez said.
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