LAFAYETTE, La. (KLFY) -- Three people were killed in a plane crash Tuesday morning in Lafayette Parish when a small aircraft went down less than a mile from its intended landing site.

The victims have been identified as 58-year-old Bruce Verduyn and 42-year-old Justin Ramsey, both from The Woodlands, Texas, and 46-year-old Lydia Laws from Spring, Texas. The crash occurred just after 11 a.m., with the plane narrowly missing several homes, a church, a dollar store, and a gas station before crashing into an open field.

"It's just scary. It just, it happened so fast. It happened fast," said Avery Vallot, a witness who saw the aftermath of the crash.

Surveillance video captured the moment the small plane appeared to fall out of the sky. Vallot, who was sitting outside his home nearby, described the terrifying scene.

"It passed close to our house. It's just terrible," Vallot said. "I just heard a bunch of bombs going off. I got up, and I came to look. It was an airplane. It ran out of gas or something. I don't know what happened."

According to Vallot, the pilot attempted to land in a nearby field but was unsuccessful.

"He tried to land in that field, and he just went down," he said. "He just went flat down, and he slid to where he's at right now."

Vallot immediately called 911 to report the crash.

"She says 'Oh, okay.' Then she says, 'We're getting a lot of calls over it,'" he recalled.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is leading the investigation into the crash to determine the cause. The plane was reportedly supposed to land at a privately-owned airstrip nearby.

The tragic accident has left the local community in shock, as investigators work to uncover the cause of the crash.

"I always see them. I watch them. I always watch them, but I never see them come this way and that low. It was terrible," Vallot said.

All facts in this report were gathered by journalists employed by KLFY. Artificial intelligence tools were used to reformat from a broadcast script into a news article for our website. This report was edited and fact-checked by KLFY staff before being published.

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