Five injured when plane hits Florida supermarket

Five people were injured, three of them seriously, when a small, twin-engine airplane crashed onto a busy supermarket in central Florida Monday night, police said.

"The crash happened about 7:20 pm (2320 GMT) less than two miles west of DeLand Municipal Airport, where the plane had just taken off," DeLand Police Sergeant Chris Estes told reporters.

The seriously injured included two passengers on the airplane and a third person on the ground who suffered severe burns. They were taken to Orlando Regional Medical Center.

All of the injured people on the ground were customers of a Publix supermarket, a chain of stores found throughout Florida, Estes said.

The cause of the crash is not yet known but is expected to be investigated by the Federal Aviation Administration, police said.
Estes described the aircraft as an "experimental airplane."

The Orlando Sentinel quoted DeLand resident Frank Plumb as saying: "I was sitting down, eating dinner and heard a boom. When I looked out my window, I saw a black cloud of smoke."

About 20 fire trucks and other emergency vehicles responded to the crash and fire, the newspaper reported.

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