A business jet with six people on board crashed on a highway in Laredo, Texas, and caught fire Tuesday night, authorities said, killing one person and causing chaos as people left their vehicles to frantically try to smash the cockpit window and free those inside.<\/p>\n
Drivers who came upon the burning plane, which was nearly sheared in half and tipped on its side, captured dramatic rescue scenes on video or rushed toward the aircraft on foot to help. Two people came running with a sledgehammer and shovel, which they used to strike the cockpit glass and try propping open the plane\u2019s door.<\/p>\n
The plane crashed on the Loop 20 highway near the Texas-Mexico border shortly after 10 p.m., said Jose Baeza, an investigator with the Laredo Police Department. He said one person on the plane died in the crash.<\/p>\n
The person who died was Joshua Baer, who was the founder and CEO of Capital Factory, according to the Austin Business Journal<\/a>.<\/p>\n In a statement posted to Instagram, U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Austin, called Baer a “driving force” in Austin’s tech story.<\/p>\n Two pilots and three teenagers survived and have since been released from the hospital. A dog on the plane suffered from smoke inhalation\u00a0and is expected to live, according to Baeza.<\/p>\n A person in a car struck by the plane was taken to a hospital in stable condition.<\/p>\n Dashcam footage posted on social media showed the aircraft careening down the highway, taking out a light post before coming to a stop. It came to a rest close to the Laredo International Airport.<\/p>\n \u201cIt looked like part of a movie. I was in shock,\u201d said Zayra Garza, an esthetician who was driving her co-workers home when she came upon the crash.<\/p>\n No injuries on the ground were immediately reported, though five officers were taken to the hospital for smoke inhalation.<\/p>\n The plane, a Cessna Citation Latitude twin jet, departed Tuesday evening from San Jos\u00e9 del Cabo in Mexico and was bound for Austin, Texas, the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement.<\/p>\n It was not immediately clear what caused the crash. The FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board are investigating.<\/p>\n Laredo International Airport Director Gilberto Sanchez said Wednesday that a pilot on the jet radioed the airport reporting mechanical problems and asking to land. He said the pilot \u201cmentioned low fuel and a power outage.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThey had mechanical issues, and they lost communication with the tower,\u201d Sanchez said, \u201cand that\u2019s when the accident happened.\u201d<\/p>\n Video posted to social media showed the plane on its side, smashed into a highway barrier. The tail was ripped from the fuselage and lying mostly intact on a lower-level road beneath where the rescue was taking place.<\/p>\n Garza began shooting video as she approached the scene and then stopped her vehicle across from the crippled jet, which was on fire.<\/p>\n She saw someone inside the plane trying to break the cockpit window to escape. Soon, people got out of their vehicles to try to smash the window from the outside as the fire on the fuselage continued to burn.<\/p>\n Garza\u2019s husband jumped out of their vehicle to help, and Garza then saw the door of the plane open. She said three people who looked to be teenagers rushed out, followed by someone who appeared to be a pilot. Another member of the crew tried to pull out a person who seemed to be unconscious.<\/p>\n As smoke billowed from the plane, a firefighter used a small ladder to climb into the aircraft to rescue the remaining passenger, while others shot water out of a hose at the wreckage. Rescuers can be heard calling for a rope as others use rods to hold up the plane door.<\/p>\n Several times, officers helping prop open the door dart away from the plane and double over in coughing fits because of the intense smoke.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat was worrying me was the fire,\u201d she said. \u201cI was concerned that it could have just exploded at any time.\u201d<\/p>\n This was the third significant aviation accident in as many days<\/a>. A B-52 crashed<\/a> Monday during a test flight at Edwards Air Force Base in California and killed all eight people aboard, while on Sunday, 12 people were killed<\/a> when a plane on a skydiving outing in Missouri crashed.<\/p>\n NetJets said in a statement that the crash involved one of its aircraft and that it is working with authorities. NetJets is owned by Warren Buffett\u2019s Berkshire Hathaway and allows people to buy partial ownership in private jets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A business jet with six people on board crashed on a highway in Laredo, Texas, and caught fire…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":341033,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[1061,2160,557,132,134,133,1570,102,223,1225,82,13214,27,1569,2053,5239,835],"class_list":["post-341032","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-app-public-safety","tag-app-top-stories","tag-associated-press","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-ctv","tag-dallas","tag-news","tag-public-safety","tag-san-antonio","tag-spectrum-news-staff","tag-texas","tag-texas-what-you-need-to-know","tag-top-stories","tag-topic-latest-public-safety-crime-stories","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=341032"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341032\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/341033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=341032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=341032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=341032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}