Eight people died, including the pilot and co-pilot, when the private plane they were traveling in crashed into an empty building in the city of San Donato, outside Milan, Italy, on Sunday.
The Piper tourist aircraft crashed near the San Donato station, on Milan’s subway line 3, at 1:09 pm (local, 8:09 am EDT), killing the pilot, co-pilot and six passengers, including a child. All the occupants would be French, according to the local press, but the information was not confirmed by the authorities.
Investigations are underway into why the plane, which had just taken off from Milan’s Linate airport and was on its way to Olbia, on the island of Sardinia, crashed a few minutes after takeoff. The two-story building was empty and was being used as a parking lot. The space was undergoing renovation and therefore was not inhabited at the time, as confirmed by the mayor of San Donato, Andrea Cecchi, to Skytg24 television station.
The collision caused extensive damage to the building, which caught fire. The flames, however, were extinguished after the firefighters’ immediate intervention.