3 killed when small plane bound for Montgomery County crashes near Bowie neighborhood

Three people aboard a small plane were killed when their aircraft crashed overnight in a wooded area near a residential neighborhood in Bowie, prompting a large-scale search that lasted nearly four hours before first responders located the wreckage, Maryland State Police said.

The single-engine Piper Cherokee, believed to be a training flight, was traveling from Ocean City, New Jersey, to a Montgomery County airport when it went down shortly before midnight Saturday near routes 50 and 301. Authorities said the pilot and two passengers were pronounced dead at the scene.

The plane, which belonged to a local flight school, crashed in a small wooded area near a residential area and playground off of Scarlet Oak Court in Bowie, said Elena Russo, a spokesperson for the Maryland State Police.

Police have not released the identities of those who perished.

“It was an absolute tragic incident,” Russo said. “It could have been even worse because of the proximity to a town home community in Bowie.”

An emergency alert from an iPhone at around 11:53 p.m. made authorities aware of the plane going down, according to Russo.

Dozens of first responders, some on the ground and others in the air, set out to find the plane. Authorities located it at about 3:45 a.m. Debris lay scattered over 100 feet.

A man, who asked not to be named and said he is a flight instructor from Australia, said he and his friends heard about the crash through others in the local aviation community and felt compelled to help first responders. The group found the plane’s path on Flight Radar 24 and followed it to its last visible location near the woods.

The group met at a nearby high school, where police asked them not to go into the area because they were waiting for dogs to arrive to help with the search, the man said.

The man said he and his friends went looking in the woods anyway.

As they looked through the dark forest using flashlights, they saw something white hanging on a tree. Upon closer examination, the man said, he realized it was the plane’s wing.

Moments later, he saw part of the tail. Fearful that someone might need help, he said, he decided to get closer. That’s when the man looked inside and saw a bloodied arm so white he knew it was lifeless.

He couldn’t bring himself to look at the victims’ faces, so he retreated and tried to summon help, yelling and throwing flashlight signals into the air for police to find them. He hopped a fence and flagged authorities down.

It remains unclear what caused the crash and if there were any communications signaling trouble from the pilot. Russo did not know the name of the flight school that owned the plane and could not say if it was typical that a training flight would be in the sky that late.

The National Transportation Safety Board and Federal Aviation Administration are investigating.

Neighbors in the town home community described hearing a boom in the middle of the night. Most thought it was a thunderstorm rolling in, a car blowing a tire or a crash on Route 50.

But the sound was enough to cause Shuntonya Clark to get out of bed and look out her window to the woods and playground at the rear of the complex.

It was dark. She could see that the stoplight at an Annapolis Road intersection was working. She said she saw something white on the ground but didn’t think about it, assuming maybe something blew over near the playground.

It wasn’t until later in the morning, after authorities had taped off the area behind her home, that she realized what it was.

“That’s a wing,” she said. “I saw the wing before I went to bed, but I didn’t know it was a wing at the time.”

This article has been updated.