Sue Hilinski of Vandalia was driving south on Ohio 741, at the edge of Dayton-Wright Brothers Airport Thursday, April 1, when she noticed a plane coming in low and fast to the runway.

“It was awful. I didn’t think I was watching an accident happening,” Hilinski said. “The left wing hit the ground. It toppled it over. As soon as the body of the plane hit the ground, it exploded into flames.”

Joan Lipinski, from Cincinnati, was at the Marketplace Express gas station when the crash happened.

“The plane was really low going over the gas station,” she said. “The wing hit first and then it just crashed. It was an odd, kind of surreal thing to see. I called 911.”

The pilot, Tom Hausfeld, and his daughter, Kacie, died in crash, which occurred shortly after takeoff. Hausfeld was returning to the airport after experiencing a malfunction when the single-engine Beechcraft Bonanza went down at about 12:55 p.m., according to Rich Fox of the Federal Aviation Administration control tower at Dayton International Airport.

The crash happened just east of Ohio 741 along Pennyroyal Road near Settlers Walk, a residential and shopping complex. Dayton-Wright Brothers Airport is on land that sits on both Montgomery and Warren counties. The crash occurred in Warren County.

The Hausfelds were heading to the DuPage County (Ill.) Airport in suburban Chicago when the pilot reported that a cargo door was open, FAA spokeswoman Elizabeth Cory said. The plane crashed just short of the runway, she said.

The National Transportation Safety Board, with assistance from the FAA, will lead an investigation into the crash, Cory said.

Witnesses near the Marketplace at Settlers Walk said the plane flew near a gas station before crashing near the south end of the airport runway.

Tim Hall said he and his daughter were driving north along Ohio 741 when they spotted the plane.

“They were landing, but they were in a steep descent.” The plane banked right, with the right wing dipping about 60 degrees from level, Hall said.

Hall, an aviation buff, said the pilot appeared to be trying hard to get the airplane lined up with the runway.

Seconds later, a column of black smoke rose about 200 feet into the sky, Hall said. The plane had cleared a barrier at the end of the runway, but crashed and burned. “I looked at it and there was nothing left,” Hall said.

Caleb and Jonathan Lee, ages 11 and 9, were tossing ball at the nearby YMCA baseball diamond when they heard the plane “bump” and saw it cartwheel over the field and explode. They ran into the YMCA to find their mother, Tara Lee of Springboro. “They were really traumatized,” she said. “I felt like crying, but I didn’t want to make it worse. We just prayed for the people” in the plane.

The turboprop airplane, manufactured in 1983, was registered to Poelking Air LLC of Wilmington, Del.