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LOS ANGELES — Small plane crashes on city streets is not unheard of.
Sometimes everything turns out OK, and sometimes it's a tragic event. A pilot who crashed a small plane in Los Angeles walked the thinnest line between OK and tragic in early January.
The man survived the initial crash, but he was injured enough that he couldn't get himself out of the aircraft. The incident happened just down the street from a police station, so first responders were quick to the scene. However, they had more saving to do than they bargained for.
It would be one thing if the plane had crashed on a regular city street, but the plane landed in the middle of railroad tracks. While police were struggling to get the man out of the plane safely, you guessed it, a train started to approach.
"All of a sudden the bells, the whistles, the lights started flashing, and I just thought, 'No, this can't be happening,'" said Robert Sherock from the Los Angeles Police Department in the "NBC Nightly News" report. "I looked down the tracks, and I see this train with three huge white lights coming right at us."
A group of several police personnel stayed put, but it was no longer wise to attempt to gently free the man. Instead they used as much muscle and teamwork as they could to haul the man out and away quickly as possible.
Seconds later, with the horn blaring over and over again, the train destroyed the plane.
Police body camera video recorded the incident, showing that the injured man and the group of police officers were just a few yards away when the train barreled by and through the plane at an estimated 60 mph.
If you survive a plane crash and then in the space of minutes you narrowly miss getting killed by a train, maybe it's time, as Sherock said, to buy a lottery ticket.
