4 Dead as Plane Hits Atlanta Interstate

All four people aboard a small plane were killed when it crashed on a busy Atlanta interstate this morning, but, amazingly, nobody on the ground was injured. The Piper PA-32 cashed onto I-285 about 10am, reports the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The victims are identified as three men (Christopher, Phillip, and Greg Byrd) and one woman. The plane had just taken off from the DeKalb-Peachtree Airport, but the pilot reported trouble "climbing out" before saying, "Hey, we're going down," reports WSB-TV.

"It looked like it was struggling," a witness tells AP. "You could see him trying to get the nose of the plane up. It was edging up, and then it just dropped. It was just a huge fire, just smoke and fire." The AP also talks to the driver of a tractor-trailer who felt the plane graze the top of his truck before crashing. "It's a miracle, literally a miracle, that no other cars were hit," says DeKalb Fire Capt. Eric Jackson. (More plane crash stories.)