Where were you the night of Saturday, November 12, 2005? If you were in Milwaukee’s Riverwest neighborhood, you likely had one hell of a night.
Yes, that was the night that a single-engine Piper PA-28 airplane crashed and got tangled up in some power lines in an alley near Humboldt Boulevard and Clarke Street. The crash happened at approximately 6:15 p.m., knocking out power in the immediate area. The plane hung suspended in the air, approximately three feet off the ground, for two hours. Firefighters eventually got the thing down. No one, including the pilot, was injured. The whole thing was weird.
“We saw the plane coming down, and when it came down it crashed into the wire pole and all the wires split in half. Everybody started running over here,” a woman told CNN at the time. According to the news outlet, the woman said the crash sounded “like two cars were crashing into each other.”
And oh yeah: the plane’s pilot, David Betts, was drunk. According to a 2009 Pioneer Press story, the 37-year-old Elkhorn, Wisconsin man served six months in jail for the incident. He was arrested again in 2009 for drunk driving—his eighth OWI at the time.
“Firefighters removed the pilot by smashing the plane’s windshield, said fire department spokesman Joe Hegeman Jr. He said the pilot didn’t say anything to rescuers,” reported CNN.
Years later, did the incident inspire at least one dreamy Milwaukee indie-rock song? It did! “Tangled in the power lines / Man-mad sunshine,” dreamy Milwaukee indie-rock band Camden sang in 2021. Indeed. Never forget. [h/t Ryan F.]
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