Small Plane Slams Into NJ Home

A small plane crashed and exploded in a residential neighborhood in the New Jersey suburbs of New York City on Tuesday morning, leaving its pilot dead and setting two houses on fire, the AP reports. The twin-engine Cessna 414 went down at 11am just several hundred yards from Claremont Avenue Elementary School in the Colonia section of Woodbridge Township, the Federal Aviation Administration says. No one was in the home the plane crashed into, but flames spread to another house, where a woman escaped injury, Woodbridge Mayor John McCormac says. He does not believe anyone on the ground was injured.

Steven Smith lives around the corner from the crash site. He says he heard a plane coming in low as if it was diving. "Then there was a real short pause for about two seconds. Then there was a massive boom that shook my whole house," Smith says. George Brown, another neighbor, tells WCBS he saw flames where the plane went down. "It kind of looks like a volcano erupted," he says. The flight had left Leesburg, Va., with only the pilot aboard, authorities say. It had been headed to Linden Airport, about four miles from the crash site. The weather in the area was cloudy and misty at the time of the crash. National Transportation Safety Board investigators say the pilot was cleared to land before suddenly losing contact with air traffic controllers.

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