GARDNER, Mass. — Federal authorities are investigating after a single-engine airplane was struck by apparent gunfire on approach to Massachusetts’ Gardner Municipal Airport on Monday.
Student pilot Dan Black told WFXT that he and his instructor were about 700 feet in the air when what they later learned was a bullet pierced the Cessna 172′s wing before coming to a stop inside the aircraft’s fuel tank.
Black, who had taken off from Worcester Regional Airport around noon, told the TV station that he was practicing landing the four-seater plane and was about two minutes from Gardner Municipal Airport when things went wrong.
“Once we started to smell the fuel, we knew something was going on, but we didn’t think it was a bullet. We saw that fuel was coming out of our wings, so we knew we had an issue with the left tank. And we parked the plane and dumped all the fuel out into buckets. And then during that process, we noticed there was a hole in the wing,” Black told WFXT.
The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating the incident, along with the Templeton Police Department and the Worcester County District Attorney.
Neither Black nor his instructor was injured.
“(The bullet) went all the way through the wing and stopped here in the bottom side of the fuel tank,” Gardner Aviation Services owner Dominic Scalera told WFXT.
“It’s insane. To be shooting a gun at random things, and not a target or an animal, is pure stupidity. It could’ve exploded if something went wrong on landing. A couple of inches lower, they could (have) hit the pilot,” he added.
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