In brief: 4 dead in plane crash on Atlanta interstate

Doraville, Ga. – A small passenger airplane dropped from the sky, grazed the hood of a tractor-trailer and crashed into an Atlanta interstate Friday, killing all four people aboard and starting an intense fire on the busy highway.

The Piper PA-32 took off from DeKalb Peachtree Airport and apparently ran into trouble not long afterward, Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Kathleen Bergen said.

Motorist Don McGhee, 48, said he saw the aircraft nearly hit a traffic light pole near the highway onramp.

“It looked like it was struggling. You could see him trying to get the nose of the plane up. It was edging up, and then it just dropped,” McGhee said. “It was just a huge fire, just smoke and fire.”

DeKalb Fire Capt. Eric Jackson said all four people on board died in the crash, though authorities did not immediately release the names of the victims. The plane nearly struck a vehicle being driven by a former DeKalb County firefighter.

“It’s a miracle, literally a miracle, that no other cars were hit,” Jackson told reporters.

Trial over ’79 disappearance ends in hung jury

New York – The murder trial of a man accused in the 1979 disappearance of first-grader Etan Patz ended Friday in a hung jury, leaving one of the nation’s most wrenching missing-children cases still unresolved after nearly two generations.

After 18 days of deliberating, jurors said for a third time that they were hopelessly deadlocked – 11-1, in favor of conviction – in the case against Pedro Hernandez. The judge declared a mistrial as Hernandez sat impassively.

The Maple Shade, New Jersey, man was a teenage stock clerk at a Manhattan convenience store near where 6-year-old Etan vanished May 25, 1979. He would become one of the first missing children ever pictured on milk cartons.

Prosecutors immediately asked to set a new trial date in the case, which frustrated authorities for decades before a tip led them to Hernandez – never before a suspect – and he confessed in 2012. His lawyers said the confession was false and concocted by mental illness, and they said another longtime suspect was the more likely killer.

Several jurors said they found Hernandez’s confession compellingly detailed and buttressed by admissions he’d made to friends and relatives years before, and those jurors said they felt his mental problems were the result of a guilty conscience.

“Pedro Hernandez, you know what you did,” said forewoman Alia Dahhan, who works in the arts.

Shipments resume after oil train derailment

Bismarck, N.D. – BNSF Railway resumed shipments Friday along a track in North Dakota two days after an oil train derailed and caught fire, and cleanup continued on crude that spilled into nearby wetlands.

The 109-car train was hauling crude from the Bakken oil patch in western North Dakota when the cars filled with about 180,000 gallons of oil went off the tracks and caught fire about 7:30 a.m. Wednesday.

The mainline through the small town of Heimdal was reopened after the six derailed tank cars were removed and a section of track that was damaged during the accident was repaired and inspected, BNSF Vice President Mike Trevino said.

The section of track where the derailment occurred was last inspected by BNSF on May 4, and by federal officials on Feb. 2, said Federal Railroad Administration spokesman Kevin Thompson.

The inspections found no defects or violations of federal regulations, Thompson said.

Trevino said the railroad was “absolutely confident” the track was safe to put back into service.

An estimated 34,000 gallons of oil burned in the fire and 60,000 gallons spilled from the tankers, state Health Department Environmental Health Chief Dave Glatt said.