Both occupants of a small plane that went down at about 11 a.m. Wednesday in a tree-lined ditch along Irving Park Road in unincorporated DuPage County near Roselle escaped serious injury, according to authorities.
On its descent, the plane went into distress and initially landed on Irving Park Road itself before veering into the ditch, the DuPage County Sheriff’s Office said.
Flight records show the aircraft circled Schaumburg Regional Airport multiple times before the crash.
Roselle Fire Department personnel respond to a downed plane Wednesday morning on Irving Park Road near Williams Street.
Courtesy of village of Roselle
The plane belongs to a flight school at the Schaumburg airport, village officials said. It is owned by Lima-001 LLC out of Muscatine, Iowa, records show.
Even the nearest residents who were home at the time were alerted by the response rather than the sudden arrival of the plane.
“My wife saw a lot of emergency vehicles out front and thought it was a car,” said Dave Lien, who’s lived in his house for 41 years. “I went out and saw the front end of an airplane halfway into our yard. When you see a plane in your front yard, it’s a little disconcerting.”
The occupants of the plane had already left the scene by then, but Lien said he learned from first responders that their veering onto his property had been a deliberate decision to avoid traffic on Irving Park Road.
He added that the damage done to his bushes wasn’t anything that won’t grow back. In four decades of watching planes land at the airport, Lien said nothing remotely similar has ever happened before.
He and his wife are the godparents of Deanna Schoewe, who grew up in the house next door and drove over from her job in Roselle to make sure her parents’ house was all right.
Both occupants of a small plane that went down at about 11 a.m. Wednesday in a tree-lined ditch along Irving Park Road in Roselle escaped serious injury, according to Roselle police.
Brian Hill/bhill@dailyherald.com
The traffic alert alone was what sent her to the house while her parents were out, but she received a text on the way informing her that a plane was the cause.
That didn’t prepare her for the sight that greeted her, though.
“I was just surprised,” Schoewe said. “My parents have lived in that house for 40, 50 years. Planes are going over all the time. I’m glad everyone was safe. I’m glad everyone walked away.”
The No Passing sign that’s been on the north side of Irving Park Road by the house her entire life was knocked down by the plane.
The only real disruption to her parents’ property was the garbage cans being knocked over, she said.
Investigators are working to determine what caused a small plane to crash Wednesday morning along Irving Park Road in Roselle.
Courtesy of ABC 7 Chicago
According to the online flight schedule associated with the plane’s identification number, it departed from Janesville, Wisconsin, at 9:56 a.m. and was due at Schaumburg Regional Airport at 10:46 a.m. Earlier in the day, it had departed from Schaumburg at 9 a.m. and landed briefly in Janesville at 9:50 a.m., flight records show.
It has been flown almost daily for the past two weeks, records also show.
Traffic on Irving Park Road was shut down from Roselle Road to Rodenburg Road for several hours as authorities remove the plane and investigate the crash, but traffic resumed around 3:30 p.m.
The DuPage County Sheriff’s office is assisting the Federal Aviation Administration with the crash investigation.
