NORTH FORT MYERS, Fla. — Drivers on Bayshore Road in North Fort Myers got a sight no commuter expects shortly before noon on Saturday, November 7: a small propeller plane coming down out of the sky, bouncing across the lanes of a busy road beside the Interstate 75 overpass, and clipping the back of a pickup truck before it rolled to a stop. Two pilots were aboard the Cessna. Nobody — in the plane, in the truck, or anywhere on the road — was injured, according to the Lee County Sheriff's Office.

Source: Lee County Sheriff's Office via FOX 13

The flight had begun about 50 minutes earlier. Flight-tracking data reported by CBS12 put the aircraft's takeoff from Sebring, Florida, at around 11 a.m. on Saturday, with the emergency landing on Bayshore Road at approximately 11:50 a.m. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said the pilot reported an engine issue; the sheriff's office described it as a mechanical problem that forced the crew to attempt a roadway landing. What exactly failed has not been released.

Source: CBS12 / WPEC

Witness accounts describe a landing with no margin for error. The plane came down at an angle, touched down in the far left lane, then bounced into the middle lane and the turn lane as traffic moved around it, according to witness reporting gathered by WGCU. During the slide, the aircraft clipped the rear of a pickup truck travelling eastbound on Bayshore Road, near the Del Webb Oak Creek Boulevard intersection, the sheriff's office said.

Source: WGCU

"20 to 30 feet behind his truck"

The closest call belonged to Brandon Hinson, who was driving a truck towing a trailer on Bayshore Road when the plane came down behind him. Hinson told WGCU the aircraft touched down about 20 to 30 feet behind his vehicle; he slowed to a stop as the plane bounced across the lanes. The landing was captured on video by Danny Roldan and shared nationally by CBS News, showing the aircraft low over the road while cars kept moving beneath it, then rolling along the roadway at speed.

Source: WGCU

Residents along the road watched it happen in front of their homes. "It's definitely not something you see in front of your house every day, that's for sure," Lindsey Wegelian, a North Fort Myers resident, told a local station. The aircraft is a 1963 Cessna 172D Skyhawk, tail number N2905U, registered to Edward B. Kear of Bonita Springs, according to registration details reported by the Lakeland Gazette. FOX 13 reported the two pilots had not been publicly identified.

Source: Lakeland Gazette

What the sheriff's office and the FAA say

Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marceno struck a tone of relief. "Thankfully, this incident had a positive outcome, and no one was injured," he said, adding: "Given the recent tragic news involving aviation accidents, we are especially grateful that everyone is safe." Deputies and Florida Department of Transportation crews safely relocated the aircraft from the roadway while the FAA works to assume the investigation, Marceno said in a post on X. Eastbound Bayshore Road saw lane reductions while the sheriff's office and FDOT managed the scene.

Source: Lee County Sheriff's Office

The sheriff's reference to recent tragedy was not abstract. Florida is coming off a deadly week in the air: the landing came hardly a week after the fatal Greenacres Learjet crash, which remains under investigation. That context is part of why a Saturday-morning mechanical failure over a built-up stretch of Lee County — with homes, trailers and midday traffic on every side — ended as a story about luck and airmanship rather than loss. Bayshore Road runs east from North Fort Myers toward the I-75 interchange, a corridor used daily by commuters, boaters and commercial traffic.

Source: People Daily Digital