UPDATE: 9/13 6:00 PM
The pilot has been identified as 51-year-old Stephen Annis of New Waverly, a small town near Huntsville. Investigators believe he may have been flying to the Tyler airport.
Annis was flying from the David Wayne Hooks airport near Houston in a Piper PA 23-250 before he crashed in Bullard.
Thursday, investigators with the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board combed through the wreckage to find out what happened.
Somehow Annis was able to miss every house in Cumberland Ridge. He came down nose first in the street on Treasure Cove.
"With the trees being kind of relatively undamaged, it's going to be more of straight down impact into the ground. Whether that was controlled or uncontrolled, we don't know at this point to be able to say," said Jason Aguilera, National Transportation Safety Board.
The NTSB said they expect to have the preliminary report on what may have caused the small plane to crash in about five days.
BULLARD (KYTX) - The FAA is taking over the investigation into the small plane crash in Bullard that killed the pilot.
"So low and loud, loud roaring sound. I thought it would crash into my house," says Laura Trotter.
Trotter was just one of the witnesses who heard this prop plane come crashing down in Bullard Wednesday afternoon.
"Heard the engine change, it was just different," says Debbie Bryant.
Bryant couldn't spot the plane at first from several miles away on Lake Palestine.
"He came out of the clouds and looked like he was doing acrobatics at first, I didn't realize he was having a problem until he was spiraling down," says Bryant.
That's when she saw smoke.
Somehow the pilot was able to miss every house in Cumberland Ridge and came down nose-first in the street on Treasure Cove.
"We ran towards the plane, we could smell the fumes from the plane," says Trotter.
"According to witnesses, looked like he lost control," says Trooper James Fulton.
DPS Troopers removed the pilot's body and began the investigation.
Trooper Fulton says they aren't sure where the pilot was coming from or flying to.
Now they're piecing an investigation together.
"Looks like we have wing tip in the lake, another wing tip across the road and more debris in the woods," says Trooper Fulton.
Some of that debris right up to the front door of homes, miraculously, no one else was injured.
"I know the pilot did his dead level best to miss all these homes and hit that lake, I think that pilot knew he was going down," says Trotter.
All of this, parts of a puzzle that could answer how the plane lost control, and came in for a deadly landing.
"Very sad, I knew when he hit there was no way he could make it," says Bryant.
The FAA will remove the plane from the roadway and begin looking at the plane itself for clues.
DPS says no one else was in the plane when the crash happened.
The pilot has been identified, but troopers have not yet released his name.
