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Utah woman whose car was struck by a small plane thought she’d been hit by a cement truck

(Chris Detrick | The Salt Lake Tribune) The scene of a plane crash at 1900 West and 4500 in Roy Tuesday, September 12, 2017. The pilot of a single-engine airplane survived a fiery crash on a street in Roy Tuesday afternoon, authorities said. Roy police Sgt. Matthew Gwynn said the pilot was transported to a hospital “out of precaution,” as was the driver of a car that the plane hit.

A Utah woman recovering from a car crash thought a cement truck plowed into her vehicle. It wasn’t until she was sitting on a sidewalk that she realized her car had been struck by a plane.

The family of Samantha Sandoval told The Associated Press that it’s a miracle she walked away with only scrapes and a broken pinkie after a plane made an emergency crash landing Tuesday, sparking a fire on the single-engine plane and the rear half of Sandoval’s black sedan.

Roy police say bystanders helped Sandoval, 42, of Roy, out of her car following the accident, and an off-duty Ogden police officer who was nearby helped the pilot out of the cockpit.

The name of the 63-year-old male pilot, who suffered only minor injuries, has not been released by police.

Meanwhile, investigators from the Federal Aviation Agency and the National Transportation Safety Board continued a probe into how the crash occurred.

“The pilot of a Beech A24 Sierra airplane made an emergency landing 1 mile southwest of the” Ogden-Hinckley airport, on 1900 West near 4500 South in Roy, wrote Allen Kenitzer, a spokesman for the FAA in a statement. “The aircraft had just departed Runway 21.”

The pilot did not issue any type of distress call before the Tuesday afternoon crash, said a spokesman from the tower at the Ogden-Hinckley airport on Wednesday. The only transmission he’d tried to make before going down was his call sign.

Roy police Sgt. Matthew Gwynn said Wednesday that police had trouble contacting the pilot because his phone was destroyed in the fiery crash. A woman identified herself as the pilot’s daughter on Facebook did not respond to a message from The Tribune on Wednesday.

The aircraft had sat ”for years” on the tarmac at the nearby airport, according to airport manager Jon Greiner. The pilot had just purchased the plane and was flying it somewhere for a maintenance check, Greiner said

An NTSB representative confirmed the agency was investigating the crash but did not have an update on the case Wednesday.