‘Plane’s underside was lit up bright yellow … saw sparks flying’: Washington DC crash witness recounts what he saw

Ari Schulman, who witnessed the collision while driving home, has spoken the CNN, detailing out the incident based on what he exactly saw.

According to Schulman,  he was driving south on the George Washington parkway that runs right by the airport. “I was headed south, going straight, the airport was on my left. I was looking at the line of planes coming in,” he said.

Schulman said it was common for him to watch the line of planes coming in whenever he took the Washington highway to head home. “I saw how evenly spaced apart they (planes) were. And I thought there might be one right about to land. Looked like the spacing was right,” he said.

He noted that initially when he saw the plane it looked normal. “It looked fine, normal… and was right about to head over lands, may be 120 feet over the water. Looked like a fairly small or normal-sized passenger jet.”

He then looked away for three seconds, to see the road. However, when he looked on his left, the plane “was banked all the way to the right… past 90 degrees”.

“I could see the underside of it… it was lit up in very bright yellow, and there was a stream of sparks underneath it. It looked like a Roman candle, you know if you held one on 4th of July, but it was much, much bigger than that. It was high off the ground,” Schulman said.

However, he did not see any helicopter as it was very dark out there, he said. “Its a very very dark night… So anything that isn’t illuminated, you can’t really see,” he added. “So, I didn’t see the other aircraft, but I saw the plane banking at an angle that a plane shouldn’t and I saw sparks flying.”

After the collision, Schulman looked back at the road and then again looked to his left, expecting to see an explosion or a crash on the ground. However, he could see nothing. “I didn’t see a plane hit the ground. I didn’t see flames, an explosion, or smoke or emergency lights,” he said, while adding that it was so brief that he actually had a second thought for a moment, trying to figure it if he “hallucinated”.

— with inputs from CNN

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