11 Die When 2 Small Planes Collide Over N.J. Suburb

Two small planes collided over a neighborhood in southeast New Jersey, killing at least 11 people and sending part of the wreckage plunging onto a house, setting it on fire.

No injuries were reported on the ground.

All those killed--10 men and one woman--were aboard the two aircraft. The death toll rose to 11 from 10 after the body of one victim, who had earlier been believed missing, was found in plane wreckage, police said. The victims were from New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

Nine of those killed were aboard a Piper Navajo that took off from Lakehurst Naval Air Engineering Station, said Arlene Salac, spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration.

Investigators at the crash site found a flight manifest from the shuttle that listed nine people on board, said State Police Maj. Barry Roberson.

It was a daily shuttle flight, operated by a civilian contractor, from Lakehurst to Trenton and then to the Patuxent River Naval Air Station in Maryland, about 60 miles southeast of Washington, said Lakehurst spokesman Lawrence Lyford.

Two people--a flight instructor and a student--died on the second plane, a Piper Seminole from Northeast Philadelphia Airport, Salac said. The instructor was identified by family and friends as Craig Robinson, 28, of New Jersey, who left behind a wife and 5-month-old son. The student was a licensed pilot working on his commercial license, Hortman Aviation owner Herb Hortman said.

There was no word from either the FAA or the National Transportation Safety Board about how the planes wound up in the same airspace at a time when visibility was estimated at 10 miles.

The couple who lived in the house that was struck escaped unharmed. Fire badly damaged their two-story home in a suburban development about 10 miles south of Trenton.

Ed Trzaskawka said he was getting ready for work when the whole house shook as one of the planes crashed through the roof of the garage.

“Another few feet and it would have been in my ear,” Trzaskawka said. He said he and his wife, Cathy, grabbed the dog and cat and ran out the back of the house.

Resident Antoinette Carnivale said she saw the planes collide.

“I saw smoke and flames and pieces coming down,” she said.

An airplane tail section landed in a field several hundred yards from some homes, and what appeared to be a piece of a wing fell on the roof of another home.

More than 150 federal, state and local officials joined a daylong search for mechanical debris and human remains.

Witnesses said the collision filled the sky with debris, including a mangled fuselage with only one wing. Other plane parts landed on roofs and in backyards, trees and open fields.

Search crews recovered four bodies from the home’s smoldering rubble. Three more bodies from the Navy charter landed on a nearby athletic field, while an eighth crashed through the garage roof of another home.

The fuselage of the second plane crashed into a nearby soybean field. The Piper Navajo was registered to Tigress Aviation Inc. of California, Md., according to FAA spokesman John Clabes.

The 1978 Piper Seminole was privately owned and based in Delaware.