Plane crashes, kills 4 in Missouri

BRANSON, Mo. -- Even at midday, the streets of this resort town were bustling two weeks before the start of the tourist season.\nSo when a twin-engine plane went down shortly after takeoff, authorities were grateful it narrowly missed the main drag of nightclubs, theaters and music halls, crashing instead into a self-storage facility.\nAll four people aboard the Piper Seneca were killed, but the plane caught fire and exploded a safe distance from the busy street, near a Ripley's Believe it or Not Museum, a pair of motels and a string of musical theaters bearing the names of such entertainers as Andy Williams and Bobby Vinton.\n"The plane shook my house when it hit," said Mike Willett, who lives alongside the AAA Self Storage Inns he manages. \nThe aircraft, with its fuel tanks filled just before takeoff, struck the corner of a building of 32 storage units and quickly caught fire, destroying the building.\nTerry Ware, office manager for a plumbing company that sits near the property, said she heard the plane going over her office and sounding as if it had serious engine trouble.\n"My boss saw it in the air, and he said it was making some very erratic movements," she said. After it crashed, she ran to the site and got within 20 feet of the wreckage, which was only partly on fire.\n"You could hear the people screaming," she said. "You couldn't get close enough to help them before the fuel went off."\nPolice Chief Caroll McCulough said there was no way to tell if the pilot deliberately avoided the bustling strip. Federal aviation investigators plan to comb through the wreckage today for clues.\nLocal authorities said there might be indications of how the pilot acted in his radio communications when he reported mechanical troubles.\nThe Federal Aviation Administration said the plane crashed about 12:30 p.m., about 15 minutes after taking off from Taney County Airport in Point Lookout, Mo., on a planned flight to Lubbock, Texas.\nThe victims were identified as Paul Johnson, 71, a Lubbock dentist who was believed to be flying the plane, his wife, Marcia Johnson, 71, and another Lubbock couple, Betty Roach, 80, and her husband, Bill Roach, for whom no age was available.\nTaney County Coroner Kevin Tweedy said the two couples had been vacationing in the area. He had not heard reports of screaming and said it was unlikely the passengers were still alive.\n"It's almost certain they died instantly because of the severity of the impact," he said.\nBoth Willett and Ware said they heard what sounded like gunfire following one of the explosions and said it was probably ammunition going off in one of the storage units.\n"The storage units held a whole lot of material that is combustible and the fuel spread so the fire went up," Fire Chief Ted Martin said.\nAt least one storage unit, about 50-by-100 feet, was charred. The tail of the plane lay alone on the ground, the only part that could be seen on a short tour fire officials led. The entire storage building was blackened, with white and gray smoke rising from the wreckage and the contents spread all over the ground.\nSkies in the area were overcast, but there were no storms or unusual weather at the time of the crash, the National Weather Service said.\nBranson is about 185 miles southeast of Kansas City.\nAssociated Press writers David Twiddy and Heather Hollingsworth in Kansas City contributed to this report.