A plane crashed Thursday at 4:20 p.m. about 50 feet from a home at 2160 Spruce Creek Circle West, located in the Spruce Creek Farms subdivision. The aircraft was about a mile from the Spruce Creek Airport runway. [News-Journal/Lola Gomez]▲
A single-engine plane en route to Spruce Creek Fly-In crashed Thursday afternoon in some woods west of Port Orange, making it the second plane crash in two days within 3 miles of each other.
The pilot, 71-year-old Arthur Taxman, was the sole occupant and suffered minor injuries, said Laura Williams, Volusia County sheriff's spokeswoman.
The plane crashed at 4:20 p.m. about 50 feet from a home at 2160 Spruce Creek Circle West, located in the Spruce Creek Farms subdivision. The aircraft was about a mile from the Spruce Creek Airport runway.
Taxman was transported to a local hospital for minor injuries, Williams said.
On Tuesday night, a passenger was killed in nearby Spruce Creek Fly-In and the pilot critically injured after a single-engine plane crashed after takeoff.
Thursday's crash occurred in a wooded area behind a home on a cul-de-sac. A portion of the tail could be seen poking out of some trees, but the woods hid most of the aircraft from the driveway. The property owners declined to speak to The News-Journal. Deputies remained on the scene into the evening.
The Tuesday night crash in the Fly-In killed the passenger of a two-seat Cessna 140, 22-year-old Nandish Patel of Titusville. Patel was a student at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach. The pilot, Chase Zinn, 23, of Pennsylvania, was hospitalized with critical injuries, a federal investigator said.
And on April 4, an ERAU plane crashed in Daytona Beach after its wing fell off in mid-air. That crash killed Zack Capra, a 25-year-old Navy veteran taking his commercial pilot license test, and Federal Aviation Administration pilot examiner John S. Azma, a father of four.