A woman and her husband had just been talking about the plane that fell from the sky in Pembroke Pines in 2021 and killed a 4-year-old boy.
Moments later, she saw a plane going down near her home in Miramar. She called 911.
“Did you see any smoke or flames?” the 911 operator asked.
“No, no. But I saw it with my husband. It was going down, and we were just talking about that accident when one fell over a lady,” the caller answered. “It killed her little son, and we were just talking about that, and then we saw it going down, going down, going down and then we heard a boom.”
At approximately 11:45 a.m. Monday, a single-engine, two-seat Aventura II aircraft plunged into a home in the 2200 block of Jamaica Drive. A mother and her 2-year-old son were inside the home.
“An airplane just fell on top of my house!” a woman told the 911 operator. “Please send someone really quick!”
She said the plane fell in the back of her house near her yard and pool. She described neighbors attempting to get into her backyard to help.
“I was there with my baby, and I got out,” she said. “Please send someone really quick.”
The plane’s pilot and passenger died, but no one on the ground was injured. The plane had taken off from North Perry Airport in Pembroke Pines and crashed into the house about seven blocks away.
As cranes lifted the small aircraft from the roof of a Miramar home Tuesday afternoon, details surrounding the crash and its two victims began to come to light. But questions remain regarding the cause of the crash and the reason the two men were flying the plane over Miramar that morning.
The two people on the plane were identified Tuesday as Jordan Hall, 31, of West Park, and Antony Yen, 34, of Orlando. Neither is the registered owner of the aircraft, according to Federal Aviation Administration records; the man who owns the plane lives in Sutherland, Va. He declined to comment Tuesday evening.
Susan Hall Dotson, Hall’s mother, said she has not learned where her son was going to or from Monday with Yen and did not know how the men knew each other.
She said her son, who was an entrepreneur and sold planes, had been flying for a couple of years. He grew up in Shaker Heights, Ohio, near Cleveland.
“He was charismatic. He was hardworking. He was ingenious. He was multi-faceted,” Hall Dotson said. “He liked a lot of different things. He liked to fish, he liked to swim, he liked boating, he liked snowboarding. He liked cars. He liked starting businesses and selling things.”
Hall’s social media shows he ran a website where he sold kits with Aventura II aircraft parts for people to buy and assemble themselves. The website also shows an Aventura II plane and a Buccaneer II plane for sale.
Yen was a certified flight instructor and owner of Straight and Level Seaplanes, which offers seaplane tours across Florida, according to his social media pages.
“He was vibrant and exciting,” said his mother, Cynthia Yen. “Have you seen his videos? I don’t know what to say. He was a very good teacher. And he loved what he was doing. He loved flying airplanes.”
Only three days ago, Yen posted a video on Facebook from the cockpit of a small plane with the caption, “Another day another student, it always feels amazing to share the freedom of flying on the water.”
Yen had a sister, two brothers and 12 nieces and nephews that “are all crying,” his mother said. “He was wonderful.”
First responders worked for hours to pull the two men’s bodies out of the small plane that landed nose-down and became ensnared in live electrical wires, Miramar Police said. The crash resulted in power outages in 35 homes due to leaking fuel.
Manyerenis Moreno, 30, who lives in the home where the plane crashed with her husband and two-year old son, said she had just gone into the house with her son after playing in the yard.
“I’m still in shock,” said Moreno on Tuesday. They had returned to the house Tuesday morning after grabbing a few personal belongings and spending the night elsewhere. “It was something big. But we’re alive and that’s what’s important.”
Cranes arrived before noon Tuesday and removed the plane from the roof of the house. The extent of the damage and whether the house will be livable remain unknown.
Other unknowns include which man was flying, where the two men were coming from, and where they were going when they crashed. The National Transportation Safety Board is currently leading the investigation into the crash, but it has yet to release any information. NTSB investigations typically can take up to 24 months.
The aircraft took off from North Perry Airport about 11:30 a.m. Monday, 11 minutes before the crash, said Tania Rues, a spokesperson for Miramar Police.
According to an incident notice published by the FAA, the plane was in the “approach” phase of landing when it crashed, the phase when the plane approaches the runway.
Yen’s mother speculated that it looked like they were trying to turn the plane around because the engine died.
But the aircraft’s home base was not North Perry Airport. A Miramar city official said authorities believe the plane was relocated to North Perry Airport to avoid Hurricane Ian.
Preliminary information shows the plane “made a transient stop” at the airport, Arlene Satchell, a spokesperson for North Perry Airport and Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, said in a text message Monday night.
Some witnesses described what they thought were signs of engine trouble in the seconds before the crash.
A 911 caller said in Spanish that he was working near Island Road when he heard “the engine stopped in the air. When they tried to restart it, it was very low,” he told the operator.
In a video posted to his company’s Facebook page in June, Yen and one of his students are flying a seaplane when they lose engine power 600 feet above the ground. He takes over flight controls from his student and makes an emergency landing in a cornfield.
“Not the smoothest landing but there’s no damage to people or property so it’s good enough for me,” Yen says in a voiceover. “Fly safe out there guys. I hope to never make content like this ever again.”
Staff writer Yvonne Valdez contributed to this report.
