Woman recounts plane collision over house

DENVER -- Sheryle Nappele-Olson was cooking dinner when she heard a piercing whir and a boom as a small airplane smashed into the back of her home.

She grabbed her son and husband and ran to the street barefoot -- just minutes before natural gas ignited and blew the house apart.

"I just can't believe we're alive," Nappele-Olson, 53, said Saturday, sitting on the corner near her demolished home in north Denver.

The single-engine Cessna 172 Skyhawk that hit her home Friday had collided with a twin-engine Piper Cheyenne during the afternoon rush hour. All five people on the two planes were killed, and seven people on the ground, including Nappele-Olson's family, were injured. None of the injuries was serious.

The Cessna just missed a 12-story senior citizens' apartment building before it crashed into Nappele-Olson's home.

"I feel lucky and terrible all at once," she said. "It's horrible to think people died there."

The other plane spiraled into a yard blocks away, just missing a house and garage.

Danette Parsley found that plane in her back yard when she returned home.

"It's inches from my door," she said.

Shards of airplane metal and house siding littered the streets over an eight-block area. National Transportation Safety Board investigators on the scene Saturday were examining the wreckage and trying to determine what caused the planes to crash.

Aviation officials said the Cessna was bound for Cheyenne, Wyo., from Centennial Airport in suburban southeast Denver. The Piper took off from Jefferson County Airport northwest of Denver and was bound for Centennial Airport. The victims' names were not immediately released.

Denver Mayor Wellington Webb planned to meet with Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta to discuss whether tighter flight restrictions should be enforced in the area, said mayoral spokesman Andrew Hudson.

According to residents of the area, about a half mile from the Denver Broncos' football stadium, there was another collision in almost the same area in 1974 that sent two other planes to the ground, killing four.