A 12 -year -old girl was the first to take action when a small plane crashed into a river in eastern Nebraska on Friday night and killed the three people on board, according to a report.
Paisley Fenner, who had never marked 911 before the fatal accident, made the initial alert to emergency services when the unfortunate Cessna 180 submerged in the Platte River in Fremont around 8:15 pm, Ketv reported.
“It was like a tree and the impact could be heard when it landed,” Fenner told The Local Outlet.
“We leave, and we think,” that’s a plane. “And then my first instinct was initially just ‘calling 911’. That’s just my first instinct.
Fenner then described a heartbreaking scene with his neighbors carrying his air boats and rounding his dogs to help rescue efforts while the shattered plane floated in the water.
The young woman said she is still processing the mortal clash, never thinking that she would experience such a traumatic incident in her own backyard.
“Yesterday we were still in shock and we were still trembling, crying and trembling,” Fenner told The Outlet on Saturday.
“And today, it is still a bit in the same way and we are still trying to understand what happened. I have seen it in the news and things, plane accidents, but I did not think it would happen in my backyard.”
The victims of the plane were identified as Fremont residents Jeff Bittinger, 50, and Randy Aemrein, 48, and Daniel Williams, 43, or Moundridge, Kansas, the Dodge County Sheriff’s office announced on Saturday.
The Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transport Security Board will investigate Friday’s incident, the last of an emergency series of fatal aircraft in recent months.
The cause of the accident is unknown.
