Couple wake up to airplane wheel by their bed after deadly Cessna crash in Minnesota

Three people are dead after a Cessna airplane crashed into a Minnesota home on Saturday, Oct. 1.

It was just before midnight when the plane went down, smashing through the second floor of a house in Hermantown before hitting the ground, city officials said in a release. The Cessna 172 finally came to a stop in the backyard.

Three people in their early 30s were on board, officials said, and none of them survived.

The control tower at Duluth International Airport saw the plane disappear from radar roughly 1 to 1.5 miles south of the airport and contacted Hermantown police.

When officers arrived at the scene on the 5100 block of Arrowhead Road, they found parts scattered in the yard around the wreckage, and a huge gash across a small brick house, the Duluth News Tribune reported.

But the man and woman inside were unscathed.

Jason Hoffman and his wife were asleep when a sound like an explosion woke them up, he told MPRNews.

“I was able to grab a flashlight next to the bed and the first thing I saw was an airplane wheel sitting at the end of our bed,” Hoffman said. “That’s when we looked out and noticed the entire back half (of) our house was gone.”

Officials said 32-year-old Alyssa Schmidt, of St. Paul, died in the crash along with her 31-year-old brother, Matthew Schmidt, of Burnsville. Tyler Fretland, the pilot and a 32-year-old Burnsville resident, also died.

Investigators with the National Transportation Safety Board and FAA are investigating the crash, officials said.

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