PEMBROKE PINES, Fla. – A small plane that crashed over the weekend in Pembroke Pines has since been taken to a warehouse to be reconstructed for the National Transportation Safety Board to figure out the cause of the crash.
Officials have identified the four people who were abord that plane as 58-year-old pilot Carlos Enrique Balza Cardenas, 54-year-old Maurette Fandy, 16-year-old Carola Balza and 13-year-old Nicole Balza.
The family was returning to South Florida from a visit to Turks and Caicos.
Two days after the Sunday evening crash, residents in the area are looking forward to getting back to normalcy, but also want to see change from the nearby North Perry Airport, so this doesn’t happen again.
“It’s still like, unbelievable,” Torres Jordan, who lives in Pines Village, said.
Neighbors were relieved to see the wreckage cleared from their front lawns in the area of Southwest 14th Street and 68th Boulevard.
“Everything happened for a reason, and I feel like God put everybody in place at that time,” Jordan said.
Jordan said the propeller ended up on his front lawn, and he’s just happy it wasn’t worse.
No injuries were reported on the ground, but the four people who were onboard the plane sustained minor injuries.
Neighbors rushed in to pull out the passengers from the Cessna after the crash.
“I was vey relieved that they were all OK,” Ethan Wolfe said.
Wolfe is the boyfriend of one of the passengers who were on board the plane.
“They just said something went wrong and (the plane) just didn’t get any lift,” Wolfe said. “I think it was all something with the plane.”
Pembroke Pines Mayor Angelo Castillo said Sunday’s crash is part of a troubling trend, with dozens of incidents linked to North Perry Airport in the last five years.
“This is increasingly a problem at Perry Airport,” he said. “These are 35 crashes that I have right here.”
The mayor is requesting that a new safety report is done at the airport and neighbors want to see changes, too.
“Something has to happen with Perry Airport, something has to stop,” Jordan said.
The cause of the crash remains under investigation by the NTSB.
