CHICAGO — Six-year-old Joshua Woods was singing along to "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" when, in an instant, his family's car was filled with a deafening roar.
The noise grew louder as a jetliner skidded off a runway at nearby Midway Airport on Thursday evening and into a busy street, headed toward the car. The Southwest Airlines plane struck two vehicles, killing the boy, and injuring at least 10 others.
As the jet came to rest on top of the car, the boy's father "looked out and saw a turbine engine turning right outside his window," said Ronald Stearney Jr., the attorney for the Woods family.
The boy, who lived in Leroy, Ind., east of Chicago, had been singing along to Bruce Springsteen's version of the Christmas song as he rode to visit his grandparents, Stearney said.
Cause under investigation
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The National Transportation Safety Board said Friday the cause of the accident is still under investigation, and the plane's voice and data recorders were sent to Washington for analysis. But much of the attention focused on the 6,500-foot runway.
The deadly accident brought renewed demands for buffer zones or other safety measures at hundreds of airports around the nation to give pilots a wider margin for error.
Like nearly 300 other U.S. commercial airports, Midway lacks 1,000-foot buffer zones at the ends of its runways. Midway, a compact one mile square, was built in 1923 during the propeller era and has shorter runways than most major airports, with no room to extend them because it is hemmed in by houses and businesses.
Safety experts say such airports can guard against accidents by instead using beds of crushable concrete that can slow an aircraft if it slides off the end of a runway.
Trucker describes scene
Mahdi Abdelqader watched Thursday's scene unfold from the cab of his tow truck.
"I thought, 'Is it real or just a game?' " Abdelqader said. "I just couldn't believe my eyes."
Within seconds, the boy's father was trying to get his family out of his car. Abdelqader heard screams for help from the car and ran to the plane.
When he got there, Abdelqader heard the sound of the pilot's voice from the cockpit window saying, "Oh my God," after he saw the car underneath his jet.
Abdelqader, 31, did what he has done before with distraught motorists.
"I was telling him, 'Don't panic,' " he said.
Also in the pinned car were Joshua's mother and two younger brothers.
The other boys, ages 4 and 1, suffered only cuts and bruises. Their mother "left the hospital against medical advice" Friday because she was worried about her surviving sons, said Ronald Stearney Sr., also an attorney for the family.
The boys' father remained hospitalized with injuries to his face, neck and back.
Four people in the second car hit by the plane were injured; one remained hospitalized Friday morning. Two passengers from the plane were treated and released.
Soon after the plane stopped, the scene filled up with people. From the plane, dozens of passengers came down an emergency slide. Other motorists and people inside nearby businesses rushed to the crash site.
Leaking fuel was feared
Tom Fitzgerald, 57, was tending bar at a nearby pub when he heard two loud booms that sounded like a big-rig truck hitting potholes. Then the building started to vibrate.
"We looked outside and all we could see is the Southwest Airlines tail," he said. "It was almost unbelievable."
After the initial shock wore off, Abdelqader said a new fear took hold as the smell of fuel filled the area. "I wanted to help them, but at the same time I was scared because I thought at any moment the plane could go up in flames," he said.
Fitzgerald said police started ordering people to leave the area because of a possible fuel leak, sending many of them into his bar where they watched the scene unfold on television.
Also watching television coverage of the accident was Pat Carnahan, principal of Winfield Elementary School in Winfield, Ind., where Joshua Woods was in kindergarten.
"We all feel a little disconnected because we watched it all last night on TV not knowing what happened," Carnahan said. "And today we found out that we have a connection to that."
