Woman survives high-rise plane crash

A woman fled with her housekeeper from the apartment hit by New York Yankee pitcher Cory Lidle’s plane, followed by flames that scorched her back and legs, a relative said today.

“She was in the same room that the nose of the plane hit,” said Dr. Marc Benhuri, the brother-in-law of Ilana Benhuri, 50. “I’m telling you, it is an absolute miracle that she is alive. I honestly believe that God was sitting on her shoulder.”

Benhuri was doing paperwork at her desk when she heard the small plane outside her 40th-floor apartment, Marc Benhuri said. The housekeeper saw the plane coming towards her and rushed into the other room to get her, Benhuri said.

The plane crashed into the apartment as they were trying to make their way out, Benhuri went on. The women closed the door of the room where the plane hit, then closed the front door and ran down a fire escape to safety, he said. Closing the front door of the fiery apartment probably saved their lives, Benhuri said.

“She ran fast. That was a miracle. I don’t know how she made it,” said Dr. Parviz Benhuri, Ilana’s husband. He said his wife, whose condition in hospital today was described as fair, “was in very good spirits".

“She has a burn from her lower back all the way to her ankles,” Marc Benhuri said. “She is in a lot of pain. And she has a very big neck brace.”

Benhuri, Parviz Benhuri’s older brother, said Ilana Benhuri was conscious and able to talk.

“Thanks God she is alive,” he said.

The Benhuris’ housekeeper, Eveline Reategue, escaped serious injury.