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https://nypost.com/2022/08/09/plane-makes-dramatic-crash-landing-on-california-highway-before-bursting-into-flames/

Plane makes dramatic crash landing on California highway before bursting into flames

A small plane made a dramatic crash landing on a California highway on Tuesday, hitting a truck full of people before bursting into flames.

The plane crashed into the eastbound lanes of the freeway of the 91 Freeway in Riverside County near Lincoln Avenue just after 12:30 p.m., the California Highway Patrol told KTLA.

Heart-stopping footage obtained by the outlet shows the plane drop out of the sky and touch down in the middle of traffic before skidding off towards the shoulder, leaving behind a trail of burning jet fuel.

The pilot and passenger onboard were both able to get themselves out of the plane safely CHP said. The plane also crashed into a truck with three people inside, who were also fortunately unharmed.

CHP said that the pilot claimed to have made an emergency landing on the freeway after experiencing engine failure as it headed towards Corona Municipal Airport to land.

“(We’re) very fortunate today that the traffic was light, and the pilot appears to have made some good landing navigation that avoided what could have been a very bad tragedy,” CHP Capt Levi Miller told KTLA.

Video released by the Corona Fire Department shows the plane engulfed in flames and emitting massive plumes of smoke before a firefighter douses the aircraft with a water. Another photo from the department shows the charred remains of the plane on the highway.

The eastbound lane of the highway was shut down for several hours as authorities investigated the crash and removed debris, causing major traffic delays.

https://nypost.com/2022/08/10/how-a-thiefs-wife-ruined-the-heist-of-the-century/

‘Ninja Turtles’-inspired bank robbers pulled off ‘the heist of the century’ — but a thief’s wife blew it

In 2006, an army of police officers surrounded the Banco Rio in Acassuso, Argentina, and negotiated for hours with a bold group of robbers inside.

The criminals took hostages and demanded the police bring them pizza, as the nation watched on live TV. Snipers perched in trees, ready to shoot if needed.

Finally, one robber told the police they were ready to surrender. But when law enforcement entered the bank, there wasn’t a perp to be found. They’d vanished without a trace, taking with them a reported $20 million in cash and valuables from safety deposit boxes.

“We used a tunnel, not to break in, but to break out,” says the robbery’s mastermind, Fernando Araujo, in the new Netflix documentary “Bank Robbers: the Last Great Heist,” which debuts on Wednesday.

“No one [had] ever planned to do a heist this way.”

Araujo, an artist and small time pot grower, started concocting the plan in 2003, when he rented a house near the bank and began exploring the sewage tunnels beneath. Inspired in part by the “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,” he dubbed his scheme the “Donatello Project.”

Posing as an architecture student, he called the public works agency in Acassuso to get information on how the ground might handle tunnels. Then he convinced Sebastián García Bolster, a local motorcycle mechanic to join his team as a civil engineer.

They calculated how to drill 15 meters diagonally into the bank, essentially making their tunnel a triangular hypotenuse between the building’s basement and the sewer. Doing so would require some heavy machinery.

“To make a hole the size of a soda bottle [with pickaxes] took one hour. It was impossible. So we had to bring in a 220 watt generator so we could use an electro pneumatic drill,” Araujo says.

As their plans came together, they found more men to be part of the heist. Career crook Rubén “Beto” de la Torre was recruited as muscle and Luis Mario Vitette Sellanes came on as well — he would become designated police negotiator. They recruited another man referred only in the film as “the Doc” and said to be both a lawyer and a sophisticated thief.

After years of tinkering, the plan came into focus. Rather than going through the sewer to exit to local waters, as law enforcement would likely predict, Araujo’s team would go deeper into the city’s bowels.

The crew bought an old van and customized it to have a floor hatch so they could park it above a manhole and climb directly into the vehicle without ever going out onto the street. They recruited a man named Julián Zalloecheverría to be their driver and someone called “the kid” to serve as extra muscle.