Nathaniel Stiles, a youth pastor leading a game night at a nearby church, said it’s a “pure act of God” none of the eight residents of an apartment building in southwestern New Hampshire were hurt after a small airplane crashed into the residential complex.
On Friday night, a single-engine Beechcraft Sierra plane crashed into the building in Keene, tragically killing the two people who were aboard the aircraft. However, no one else was harmed in the incident.
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The wreckage from the calamity certainly could have been much more widespread. Stiles, the youth pastor at Hope Chapel, a mere 30 feet from where the crash occurred, was hosting a group of kids playing a dodgeball game at the house of worship. He told MSN he looked out the window of the church building to see “red flames and bright skies,” a scene that caused the kids to “go into mass panic.”
“The kids are just deathly afraid and scared and traumatized from what they are seeing 50 feet away from us,” he recalled.
Thankfully, in addition to the safety of the apartment complex residents, none of the youth group members were harmed by the crash.
“It’s a miracle and a pure act of God that no one within the church nor any of the residents of the apartment complex walked with any injuries,” said Stiles. “It is a miracle in God’s hands.”
The pastor went on to say, “We are so thankful to God for getting every child and every person out of there alive. Our thoughts and prayers go out to those who lost their home[s] and the pilot and passenger who lost their lives, and kids who watched as this tragedy unfolded.”
The building itself is significantly damaged, leaving the four families in the space without homes.
One resident, Scott Gauthier, told WBZ-TV, “Almost all of our stuff is ruined, but that’s just material things that are easy to replace. Everybody got out — that was the best.”
The cause of the crash was not immediately clear. Investigators with the National Transportation Safety Board are looking into how and why the crash took place.
According to the NTSB and the Federal Aviation Administration, the small aircraft was owned by Monadnock Aviation, a Keene-based company that rents out airplanes for charter flights and flight instruction. The crashed plane took off from Dillant-Hopkins Airport in Keene and was headed north.
Please be in prayer for the loved ones of the two killed in the crash as well as for the Keene residents whose homes were destroyed in the accident.
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