Authorities say 2 killed in Ohio small plane crash

photo Caution tape stretches out at the back of a house, Saturday, Sept. 20, 2014, on Brightfield Court, in Liberty Township, Ohio, where a plane crashed.

MIDDLETOWN, Ohio - Authorities in southwest Ohio said both people aboard a small plane died Saturday morning when it crashed into a suburban neighborhood, damaging two homes while a family eating breakfast close to the fiery crash escaped injury.

The crash was reported to authorities just before 9 a.m. EDT Saturday. It clipped the side of a home, causing what authorities called "significant damage," and caught fire in a backyard in Liberty Township, some 25 miles north of Cincinnati in Butler County. Butler County and Liberty Township authorities said there were no reports of injuries to occupants of the home or to neighbors.

The Federal Aviation Administration says the plane was an Acro Sport II, a single-engine plane built in 1994. Registration records indicated it was based in Butler County, but the owner's name wasn't listed.

The FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board were investigating the cause of the crash.

Residents of the neighborhood told news reporters at the scene that they saw a biplane overhead that appeared to be doing stunts, before it went into a downward spiral and crashed. Several expressed relief that no one else was hurt with many families at home during the weekend morning.

"I was very shaken up because the plane landed in the backyard," Debbie Valentino, who lives two doors away from where the plane crashed, told The Cincinnati Enquirer. "There are young children in all these houses."

Butler County Sheriff's Chief Deputy Anthony Dwyer said both of the fatalities were men, but that he didn't have any other information to release yet as investigation continued. He said it's believed that the pilot was very experienced.

He said a husband, wife and young child were eating breakfast when the plane hit the garage area of their house, causing structural damage and leaving a hole. They were unharmed.

"If they had been standing by that wall, someone would have been killed," Dwyer said. "It hit in a very bad spot."

Siding melted on a second home near the plane.

Nearby resident Kevin Romer told WHIO TV that he saw the biplane fall down.

"We ran there, and by the time we got there, it was a raging inferno," Romer said. "We could see there was already somebody in there that didn't make it."

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