The plane, which went down shortly after takeoff Friday, clipped a street lamp and several trees as it broke up, slamming into two vehicles and coming to rest at the foundation of a home. No one on the ground was hurt.
The crash spread aviation fuel and wreckage across several blocks. The back porch of the home _ owned by the Baltimore Orioles pitcher Jason Grimsley _ was extensively damaged, and a truck and a sport utility vehicle were destroyed.
Aside from its small windows and some numerical markings, the Cessna 421C Golden Eagle III ``was very hard to identify to be an airplane,'' said Overland Park Fire Chief Dennis Meyers.
"It was totally destroyed,'' Meyers said. ``It was just all bits and pieces.''
Two of the victims had been on their way to the Bahamas for a vacation given by members of their congregation at Parkway Baptist Church, WDAF-TV reported Friday. The victims, Armour Stephenson, 49, and Shirley Stephenson, 46, were pastors at the church.
The crash came after the plane left Johnson County Executive Airport. The airport's control tower had handed the plane over to regional air traffic controllers, who never heard from the pilot, said Bob Perry, the county airport commission's director of aviation.
"That's when they knew there was something wrong,'' Perry said.
Grimsley was not in the home at the time of the crash, but his wife, Dana, and 5-year-old daughter, Rayne, were in the home. Neither was hurt.
"I heard it coming down,'' Dana Grimsley told The Kansas City Star. "I looked to my right and saw it come down. It was in a different room of the house, so I didn't see it hit. I ran upstairs from the basement with Rayne. We called 911 and ran out.''
Grimsley said it appeared that the pilot, identified as James L. Kingston, 60, tried desperately to avoid hitting anything as the plane went down.
"From what I saw, at the last second you could see the pilot did everything he could to avoid the house,'' Grimsley told The Star.
The city identified the other victims as Lewis Bradley Smith, 73, and Kevin W. Holzer, 50.
The National Transportation Safety Board was investigating.
