Cessna crashes into Marstons Mills home

BARNSTABLE -- A small plane with a sputtering engine crashed into the roof of a house in the Marstons Mills area yesterday, landing upside down in the front yard as the home's two residents watched in amazement from their back yard garden.

The pilot, identified by State Police as Alessandro R. Mendonca, 27, of Miami Beach, was extricated by the Centerville Fire Department and transported to Cape Cod Hospital . He was in stable condition last night.

The homeowners, Brian and Carol Malone , were working in the vegetable garden in the backyard of their house on Race Lane shortly before 11 a.m. when they heard the plane in trouble, flying low overhead.

"I turned in time to see it blast through the trees, take the chimney out, and pancake right out front," said Brian Malone, a natural resource officer for the Town of Dennis .

The Cessna was on its way back to Marstons Mills Airport, which is less than 2 miles from the home, after dropping off three skydivers , said Jim Peters, a spokesman for the FAA.

Carol Malone said it sounded like thunder when the plane crashed through the trees and the branches raked against the aluminum.

Brian Malone ran to check on the pilot, who was hanging upside down, still strapped into his seat in the mangled plane. Malone described the pilot as dazed and confused but not bleeding heavily.

The plane, a 1957 Cessna 182, had also broken the windshield of the Malones' green SUV when it crashed. Broken tree branches littered the yard yesterday. Bricks from the chimney were scattered along the front of the house. A blue tarp covered the hole the plane tore in the roof of the two-story Colonial.

The couple said they were happy to find that their two cats were unharmed. Malone said he was worried most about the pilot.

"Seeing the chimney come off is something you can't forget," said Carol Malone.

Steve Swain , a sculptor from Centerville, was working on a house he owns near the airport when he heard the plane's faltering engine. He looked up to see the plane quickly losing altitude and thought it would land in a nearby pond.

"The pilot kept getting the engine back and losing it again," said Swain, who dialed 911 from his cell phone as the plane was about to crash.

With his 2-year-old daughter sleeping in his van, Swain drove to the house, but emergency personnel arrived immediately to rescue the pilot.

Several hours after the crash, firefighters loaded pieces of the plane onto a trailer. They planned to transport the aluminum shreds to a hangar in Marstons Mills, where they would be inspected by the FAA.

The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the crash.

Brian Malone kept a piece of twisted blue metal for himself.

"If I thought of a thousand things that could have happened to us today, this wouldn't be one of them," he said.