ARDEN HILLS, Minn. – A motorist was driving home on Interstse 35-W after visiting a friend when suddenly she was aware of a commotion ahead. “As I got closer and closer,” recalled Janell Harwell, of Itasca, “I realized that it was an airplane that actually crashed into a vehicle.” Harwell said she slammed on her brakes with both feet before crashing into the tangled wreckage. She called 911 and got out f her car. “I I kept yelling, ‘Are you guys OK? Does anybody need help?’ And then the airplane door opened, and the woman and man came out, and I literally was just flooded with relief.” Harwell said the pilot, Craig Gifford, esponded: “’Yeah. We got up in the air and my engines just failed. My engine completely failed on me, And I had to go down wherever it was safest to go down. I tried so hard not to hit the woman in the SUV.” Later in an inyerview with television station WCCO, Harwell said: “Like, he just, that was his main thing, trying to avoid a car. And so when he hit her he was pretty distraught because he just didn’t want to hurt anybody.” She remembered the bottom of his plane was destroyed, the front too, and the SUV totaled.
Harwell. Not sure at first that a plane had crashed into a vehicle on the freeway.