He ran down the stairs, threw open his garage door, and found himself confronted by a scene of gruesome devastation.
Plane parts and human remains were scattered across his lawn and blood was splattered on his front door. A large section of the house across the street was gone.
"When I first looked at the door, it took me a couple of minutes to figure out what I was looking at," he recalled, hours later. "It's going to be difficult to sleep tonight."
A single-engine plane crashed into a house on the 900 block of Grand View Drive minutes after taking off from Chester County Airport in Coatesville yesterday, killing its two occupants.
No one on the ground was injured, said Lt. Claude Frisbie of the West Whiteland Township Police Department.
Thomas R. McKinnis, 53, and Cynthia Merritt, 48, both of rural Broughton, Ill., halfway between St. Louis, Mo., and Louisville, Ky., were killed instantly when their Piper Archer PA-28 crashed on Grand View Drive at 9:29 a.m. He was a librarian at McLeansboro High School in Illinois.
Frisbie did not know whether poor weather conditions played a role in the crash in central Chester County. The house atop a ridge on the north side of Great Valley was shrouded in fog at the time of the accident, he said.
It was the second fatal small-plane crash in Chester County this week. Four people were killed Sunday in a crash at New Garden Airport in southern Chester County.
Police officers worked at yesterday's crash scene along with agents from the Philadelphia division of the FBI. "We had heard about the tragedy and the fact that the evidence-collection site was difficult," said FBI spokeswoman Jerri Williams. "We are not directly involved in any investigative matter involving the plane crash."
It was unclear where the flight originated, but the Piper, manufactured in 1985 and purchased about two years ago from FlightStar Corp. in Savoy, Ill., had taken off from Chester County Airport after refueling at 9:25 a.m. yesterday. The plane was headed to Portland, Maine, Frisbie said.
"I heard it go in the air over my house," said Rita Aurely, who lives a couple doors away and was home. "I thought it was a dirt bike. It was like an engine revving. It was really loud, and the house shook."
She stepped outside into a thick fog and saw the aftermath. "It was horrible," she said. "There was debris all over the street."
Four minutes after leaving the airport, the plane had crashed amid the drizzle and thick fog atop the ridge with a view of the School at Church Farm.
It punched a hole into the garage and upstairs bedroom of the brick house, shearing off part of the roof. The house has been condemned, Frisbie said.
McKinnis, who was tracked by Philadelphia air-traffic controllers, made no distress calls, a Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman said.
The owners of house, Robert and Frances Lisowski, were not at home. The couple, who bought the house in 2000, according to real estate records, could not be reached for comment.
The couple's yard was covered with wheels, seats, wings, bricks, wood and insulation. There was no fire. Fuel spilled, but was diluted by a sprinkler system inside the home, Frisbie said.
After hitting the Lisowski house, the plane rolled across the street into the Quinn yard.
Quinn, a consultant, said the plane's throttle stick shattered a front window and landed inside his first-floor home-office.
"My dog started barking like crazy," said Megan Peppard, 16, who lives next door and was upstairs watching television when the crash occurred. Outside, she saw "all the debris. I couldn't even tell it was a plane."
