Witness of Collier County plane crash on I-75 offers help to survivors
NAPLES — The tail of a Challenger 604 jet — the only recognizable debris of a crash that killed two people Friday afternoon — was still on I75 southbound Saturday evening.
"I was actually in the lane that the accident happened," Kyle Cavalier, a witness of the tragedy, told CBS News Miami. "I was 40 or 50 feet behind that white truck the plane landed on."
Cavalier got out of his car and ran toward the scene while recording with his cell phone the moment survivors ran away from the plane.
"I started running over to them to make sure I could give any kind of assistance to them that they needed. I asked them if there were any other survivors, anybody still alive in the plane and they said no, they told me they were passengers but two pilots were still on the plane," said Cavalier.
Investigators said five people were on board the jet two died and three escaped.
On Saturday, the National Transportation Safety Board reiterated there is an investigation into the crash of the Bombardier Challenger 600, through a statement they said:
"The preliminary information we have is that the pilot radioed that the airplane had a dual engine failure on approach into the Naples airport. The flight originated at Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio."
"Everybody wants to blame the pilots right away but I don't believe in that," aviation attorney Robert Clifford told CBS News Miami, who in the past handled a case about a Bombardier Challenger Jet that crashed in Colorado.
CBS News Miami's Ivan Taylor asked him: "Based on your experience, what went wrong this time?"
"Some kind of mechanical failure will surface as the cause that created the problem for the pilot, it's such a rare thing for two engines to fail at the same time. It's too simplistic to say it ran out of fuel, I don't believe that and in fact, the fire at the scene will speak that fuel was not the problem," said Clifford.
The NTSB has 30 days to issue their preliminary report of the causes of the tragedy.
