Pensioners killed as plane crashes in storm

A light aircraft hit a car body shop and crashed near the birthplace of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, killing both elderly people aboard.

No one on the ground was hurt.

The twin-engined Beechcraft had taken off from the nearby DeKalb-Peachtree Airport in Atlanta, Georgia, and was heading to Venice, Florida, in a rainstorm when it went into a nosedive.

The Sarasota Herald-Tribune named the victims as pilot John Ingram, 71, and his wife, 67-year-old Rae Ingram, of Nokomis, Florida, a town near Venice.

National Transportation Safety Board investigator Eric Alleyne said the plane sent out a distress signal, but he did not know what caused it to spin out of control.

“It was tumbling straight down,” said Malcolm Okosun, who was working on a construction project a block from the crash site.

The aircraft’s wing clipped the body shop as it went down, and the plane crashed in the business’ car park.

The crash happened in the city’s historic Sweet Auburn neighbourhood, where King grew up and later preached at Ebenezer Baptist Church. The church is a few blocks from the crash site. King’s birthplace is about 40 yards away.

The neighbourhood, which calls itself the cradle of the civil rights movement, includes old warehouses that have been converted into apartments and businesses.