A small plane overshot the runway while landing at a Texas airport over the weekend, smashing through a fence and colliding with a car driving along a nearby road.
The pilot and plane's passenger were not seriously hurt in the crash and the car's driver was hospitalized with minor injuries. The harrowing incident in McKinney was captured on video by a witness who was nearly hit himself by the skidding plane.
"All I was thinking was just, 'I need to run away from this,' and I just immediately stopped filming, and I just started running backward towards the golf course," said Carson Raper, a 13-year-old eighth grader who lives near the airport.
Raper enjoys filming anything related to transportation. When he's not recording videos of trains, he's capturing footage of planes landing and taking off at Aero Country Airport.
On Saturday, just before 12:30 p.m., the middle school student said he was recording when he noticed a plane trying to land.
"The first video was its first attempt of landing, and it just had to go around. It was going way too fast, and so on its second attempt at landing, which was the crash, it overran the runway, smashed through the fence, and skipped across the road, and then a car hit it," Raper described.
He said he was standing on the sidewalk next to his bike when the single-engine Lancair IV-P plowed through the fence toward him. The video shows him stop the recording to run.
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“I was expecting it to slow down, but it just kept getting closer, and it wasn't slowing down," Raper explained.
"I just so happened to be at the right place at the right time. To see that plane crash while I was filming," he added.
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Raper said his family was in disbelief about what he witnessed and captured on his phone.
"It was kind of one of those moments where he like buried the lead when I came home," said his mother, Margie Raper. She said what happened came up later.
His mom, who happens to be a high school journalism teacher, said she was proud of her son for documenting the event, but when she saw a video from another witness and could see Carson running for safety, that's when it hit her that he could have been seriously hurt.
"It really made it hit home like how close to danger he really was," said Margie Raper.
Carson Raper said that everyone involved appeared terrified and shocked.
“I saw the pilot and the co-pilot. They just dragged themselves out of the plane, and I also saw the person. I can't exactly remember how many people were in the car, but I just remember the people in the car getting out and just being on the ground," said Raper.
The teenager has also lamented on the thought of what could have been for him had the plane and car not collided.
"I wouldn't be here, like that plane would have just plowed straight through it would have gone on the sidewalk. It would have gone on the golf course," Raper said.
The young photojournalist said this experience won't stop him from documenting planes, trains and boats, but it does make him rethink where he stands to set up his camera.
"I'll keep in mind that stuff like that can happen, and I'll probably just try and do stuff at a different angle," said Raper.
The Federal Aviation Association (FAA) and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) are investigating the cause of the crash.
The plane is registered to Ojos Aviation LLC, based in Midland, where the aircraft took off.
