What happened
During a night approach, witnesses observed an aircraft operating at high power for several seconds before a sudden impact occurred. Upon arriving at the scene, responders located the aircraft on the left side of the approach end of runway 03, where it had caught fire. The fire was subsequently extinguished, and the pilot was removed from the wreckage.
The aircraft's path involved striking a runway threshold light positioned approximately 25 feet to the left of the runway. Following this collision, the plane slid roughly 100 feet into a wooded area, traveling on a heading of 360 degrees and moving away from the runway. The impact caused the outboard five feet of the left wing to bend upward by approximately 20 degrees, and the inboard portion of the same wing eventually came to rest on the aircraft's nose.
Physical evidence at the site included ground scars consistent with the positions of the nose, left, and right landing gears, all of which had collapsed during the event. Damage to the propeller included gouges on the leading edges and