In a hair-raising video, a pilot of a small plane escaped death multiple times after his plane crashed just outside a suburban Los Angeles airfield on Sunday.
The pilot's life was saved after officers present there pulled him out just before a commuter train was about to hit the plane. The pilot has been hospitalized.
In a bodycam video, officers are seen removing injured pilot from the cockpit of a badly damaged Cessna 172 aircraft.
Police Captain Christopher Jean said the single-engine plane that took off from Whiteman Airport in Pacoima's San Fernando Valley crashed shortly at a railway crossing. The officers reached the spot minutes after the accident.
Sergeant Joseph Cavastny said he had requested Metrolink to stop all train activity, but this did not happen. At the same time, Officer Christopher Aboyte told KABC-TV that he was initially trying to alert the pilot of the crashed plane which was trapped inside the cockpit.
"Shortly after that the bells started coming in,"
Officer Robert Sherrock said that the bells began to sound soon after, and flashing lights signaled the arrival of the train. He said, "We saw a train coming towards us at high speed."
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Officer Damien Castro told KNBC-TV that all these years of training came in handy.
He said, "In times like these you don't have much time to think, you just have to move on."
The 'Bodycam video' showed that the train left with a loud noise over the wreckage of the plane as the officers removed the pilot from there.
Jenkins Sherrock, a fighter pilot in the US Air Force said, "The pilot beat Death twice within 10 minutes."
Only the pilot was onboard the small plane that crashed, he has been admitted to the hospital. He has been identified as 70-year-old Mark Jenkins. He is a 'very experienced' and former fighter pilot of the US Air Force, officials informed.
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