ATLANTA (Reuters) - Four people died on Friday when the small plane they were riding in crashed on a busy Atlanta-area highway after taking off from a nearby airport, local authorities said.
The accident shut down a stretch of Interstate 285 for hours and caused traffic problems throughout Atlanta. But no drivers on the major thoroughfare reported any injuries, including a tractor-trailer driver who said the aircraft clipped his truck.
"It was a sheer miracle that no one was hurt and that we had no other victims," said DeKalb County Fire Rescue Captain Eric Jackson.
The Piper PA-32 crashed Friday morning after departing from the DeKalb–Peachtree Airport, just northeast of Atlanta, authorities said.
Investigators do not know what caused the plane to go down about a mile from the airport, Jackson said. Television footage of the smoldering wreckage showed little of the plane was left intact after it hit the center median of the highway.
The four occupants, along with a pet, were headed to Oxford, Mississippi to attend graduation at the University of Mississippi, the Clarion-Ledger newspaper reported.
Robert Byrd, a student at the school, said his father, his two brothers and the fiancée of one of his brothers were on their way to see him graduate, the newspaper reported.
Jackson did not respond to messages seeking to confirm the identities of the victims.
Gerald Smith, the driver of the tractor-trailer rig, told WSB-TV that he saw the plane approaching his truck at a high rate of speed and slammed on his brakes.
"I heard an impact hit the front of my truck," Smith said. "If I would have stayed on the gas, I would have met it head on."
All lanes of I-285 in both directions were reopened by Friday afternoon, said Annalysce Wilson, spokeswoman for the Georgia Department of Transportation.