A cargo plane approaching an Ohio airport crashed into several unoccupied vehicles at an auto repair shop Wednesday in a fiery wreck that killed both people aboard the aircraft, authorities said.
No other injuries were reported from the early morning crash just east of the Toledo Express Airport.
The two people who died were aboard the Convair 440, Toledo-Lucas County Port Authority spokeswoman Kayla Lewandowski said.
The plane went down at a business property filled with truck cabs and trailers while no one was there and missed the nearby Ohio Turnpike.
“We got very lucky where it happened,” said Brian Rozick, the fire chief at the Ohio Air National Guard base at the airport.
He said they had no advance warning of a problem and they were notified about the crash by the airport control tower.
By midmorning, no flames were visible as firefighters occasionally sprayed water on the smoldering wreckage. The debris was contained mainly to the auto business, where several trailers were mangled and burned.
The port authority’s manager of airline affairs, Joe Rotterdam, said officials couldn’t yet confirm whether any distress call was made from the aircraft.
Officials believe the plane had traveled from Laredo, Texas, and stopped outside Memphis, Tennessee, on Tuesday before heading to Ohio, Rotterdam said. It crashed at or around 2:37 a.m.
Port authority officials said no further details were immediately available about the people who died or the plane’s owner.
Rotterdam said it’s not clear if there is a so-called black box with recorded data about the flight.
The Federal Aviation Administration and the Ohio State Highway Patrol were helping with the investigation.
Toledo Express Airport remained open.
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Associated Press writers Kantele Franko and Andrew Welsh-Huggins in Columbus, Ohio, contributed to this report.
