Miami Herald
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Giovanna Hanley was at her mother’s house when a small plane crashed — hospitalizing two adults and two teens — Sunday night in a suburban neighborhood in Pembroke Pines.
Hanley heard a loud boom that sounded like a motorcycle muffler. Moments later, neighbors sprung into action.
“My father-in-law is a first responder and happened to be here so he ran over. The plane was on fire, and all the neighbors rushed to collaborate on helping the victims get out of the plane,” Hanley, 30, told the Herald Monday. “One came from one direction with an ax, another one with a hose, a fire extinguisher, the whole community really banded together.”
At around 8:10 p.m., the aircraft, a Cessna T337G, was approaching North Perry Airport in Pembroke Pines when it hit a tree, according to the National Transportation Safety Board, which is handling the investigation. The plane plummeted into a front yard, with debris mangled in the tree branches. The crash’s cause is unknown.
The flight originated around 4:30 p.m. Sunday in the Turks and Caicos in the Caribbean; the plane was about to land, flight records show. A Turks and Caicos aviation source said the aircraft most likely came from the Dominican Republic, where it would have had to fly over the Turks and Caicos.
The crash occurred near Southwest 14th Street and 68th Boulevard, just a mile east of the airport, police say. The plane’s four passengers were hospitalized, including a teen with serious injuries. Video shows neighbors rushing to the site, dousing the flames with garden hoses.
“It sounded like a dump truck dumping rocks and then a loud boom …” said 55-year-old Patricia Oliver, who has lived in the neighborhood for two decades. “It’s just a little bit too close for comfort.”
4-year-old boy dies after 2021 plane crash
Residents are quite aware of how plane crashes around North Perry Airport, which serves small private planes and training flights for new pilots, have touched their neighborhood. In 2021, a 4-year-old boy was killed when a small plane that had just taken off from the airport nosedived into his mother’s SUV. The mother survived, but her son, Taylor Bishop, died from his injuries.
Hanley said she’s a friend of the Bishop family.
“...[W]hen this happened in our front yard, it made us very angry and turned that grief into frustration,” Hanley said, noting that residents circulated a petition seeking safety changes after Taylor’s death. “You would think that the death of a 4-year-old baby would bring about some sort of change in the community.”
Megan Bishop, Taylor’s mother, told the Miami Herald Monday that she hopes the crash spurs officials to demand safety changes at the airport.
“I’m praying this is the one,” Bishop said. “My son should still be here.... If change doesn’t come, then my son’s death was in vain. And that’s the last thing I want.”
Pembroke Pines Mayor Angelo Castillo said Monday that Sunday’s crash was one of three dozen related to North Perry Airport in the last five years. Castillo said he’s pushing Broward County to complete an independent safety study of the airport.
“You get these milquetoast excuses from the county about how safe they are and some other word salad responses and they do nothing,” he said in an interview with the Herald. “....This is a problem in Pembroke Pines, and I need to hear the county say, ‘Yes, we have a problem and we’re going to figure out a way to get better.’
“Try telling Taylor Bishop, who’ll never go to school again, that 35 crashes in a five-year period is acceptable or safe.”
Teens among plane’s passengers
Pembroke Pines Fire Rescue told the Herald Monday that a 16-year-old passenger was labeled a “Level 1 Trauma,” indicative of potentially life-threatening injuries. The agency did not say whether the teen was a girl or boy.
Fire rescue said the other injured passengers — a 45 year old, 50 year old and 14 year old — were “Level Two Traumas,” which means stable vital signs when arriving at the hospital.
Federal Aviation Administration flight records list the owner of the Cessna as Carlos Enrique Balza Cardenas of Weston. However, it’s unclear if Balza Cardenas was on board at the time of the crash. Officials haven’t identified the people on the plane.
Robert Gonzalez, 54, said he was in his kitchen at the time of the crash and opened his back door to check on the noise. Gonzalez and several other residents said they’re concerned about the history of crashes in the area.
“You got a couple of [planes] that just fell out of the air in the surrounding area, like a radius of maybe two miles,” another resident who did not want to be named told the Herald. “It don’t make me feel too good because my house is right here.”
Previous crashes connected to the airport
In addition to the crash that killed Taylor Bishop, other planes connected to the airport have gone down in recent years:
▪ In March, a small plane that took off from North Perry Airport made an emergency landing on a field at a Miramar elementary school. While no one was seriously hurt, the crash clipped the fence of Coconut Palm Elementary School.
▪ In 2022, a small plane that had taken off from the airport crashed into a home in Miramar while a mother and her 2-year-old son were inside. The pilot and an aviation student on board were killed.
▪ On May 12, 2020, a plane crashed into Miramar Commons shopping center, killing an aviation student and injuring a flight instructor. In November 2020, a pilot was killed when he had engine trouble shortly after takeoff from North Perry Airport. In December 2020 — a month later — one person was hurt in a crash after a plane had just taken off from the airport.
Miami Herald Staff Writers David Neal and Jacqueline Charles contributed to this report.
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