Authorities say two people were taken to a hospital with moderate injuries after a small plane crashed into a person as it made an emergency landing at Heartwell Park, northeast of Long Beach Airport.
Firefighters responded to a soccer field at the park at about 4 p.m. after they were notified of the crash near Carson Street just east of Woodruff Avenue, said Long Beach Fire Department Capt. Jack Crabtree.
When firefighters arrived, they found a small aircraft on its belly with broken landing gear, Crabtree said.
Firefighters pulled the pilot, an elderly man, out of the plane’s cockpit and took him to a hospital, Crabtree said. Paramedics also took a woman in her 40s to a hospital for treatment after she was struck by the plane when it attempted to land in the park.
Heartwell Park is a hub for youth sports most weeknights, with hundreds of people enjoying the park’s 122.5 acres.
The plane crash-landed on a soccer field adjacent to two softball fields.
“The good news is it could have been a whole lot worse,” Mayor Rex Richardson said at the start of Tuesday’s City Council meeting. “And we are fortunate in that there have been no fatalities, no serious injuries. It was a glider [that] did an emergency landing, pretty rough landing on the field at Heartwell Park.”
Aerial footage of the scene showed an aircraft with a cockpit made for two people. Debris was scattered near the left wing of the aircraft, which appeared to be cracked and nearly falling off.
The plane appeared to have a propeller on the back with two smaller wings near the nose and two larger wings at the rear.
Federal Aviation Administration records show the plane was a Long-EZ model aircraft first built in 1986. It was registered to a pilot living in Rancho Palos Verdes.
Jerry Taylor, a retired general aviation pilot who flew for 40 years, said he recognized it as a model designed by Burt Rutan, who created the first aircraft to fly around the world without stopping or refueling.
John Denver died in a plane crash involving the same model of aircraft in 1997, Taylor said.
Flight records show the plane took off from Compton/Woodley Airport shortly after 9:15 a.m. Tuesday and landed at French Valley Airport in Murrieta a half hour later.
The plane took off from the same Murreita airport shortly before 3:40 p.m. and was scheduled to land at Long Beach Airport at 4:03 p.m.
Investigators were working to determine the cause of the crash.