Small plane crashes into Akron house, two aboard killed

A small plane crashed into a house on a residential street south of downtown Akron on Thursday afternoon, killing the two people aboard and sending black smoke over the Coventry Crossing development.

The crash happened around 3:45 p.m. in the 2200 block of Canterbury Circle, where emergency crews rushed in after reports of heavy black smoke coming from the building. Residents told crews they had seen a plane going down into the house and heard explosions before first responders arrived, Akron Fire District Chief Sierjie Lash said.

The Ohio State Highway Patrol said both people on the aircraft died in the crash. No one on the ground was hurt, and officials said two residences were evacuated as crews secured the area. Nobody inside those homes was injured.

The aircraft was identified as a 1963 Piper Cherokee single-engine plane that had departed from Akron Fulton Airport. The crash site sat inside Coventry Crossing, a neighborhood where homes line the streets just south of downtown Akron, turning a routine afternoon into a fast-moving emergency response involving local fire crews, police and state authorities.

The Ohio State Highway Patrol and the Federal Aviation Administration were among the agencies responding as investigators began sorting out the flight path, impact and cause of the crash. The National Transportation Safety Board says it investigates every civil aviation accident in the United States, and records for those cases are organized by accident date, state and city as the inquiry moves forward.

For Akron, the immediate damage was limited to the aircraft and the house it struck, but the incident underscored how quickly a small-plane emergency can unfold over a neighborhood. A plane that took off from Akron Fulton Airport ended up inside a home in Coventry Crossing, with explosions, smoke and evacuations in minutes, leaving investigators to determine what went wrong.