A vintage aircraft crashed Thursday morning near Barnett Shoals Road minutes after taking off from the Athens-Ben Epps Airport, killing both occupants.

“I tried to save the people, but it was too late,” said a witness on the scene who identified himself as Rafael Valiente. “I tried to take the people out of the plane… just try to save a human.”

Valiente – who scrambled through a thickly-wooded area to get to the crash site – was one of several witnesses who tried to help the victims.

“I knew from the jump they were gone,” said Jachie Bowles, who saw the aircraft’s descent from his yard. “It was horrible.”

University student D. Michelle Thomas heard the impact from her house.

“It sounded like a combination of trees falling and a metallic crash,” she said, adding she could smell fumes radiating from the aircraft after the accident. “A neighbor kept saying ‘they’re dead, they’re dead.’”

The 11:22 a.m. Thursday crash killed Scott Alan Strong, 47, of Lady Lake, Fla., and 81-year-old David Stuart Garber, also of Lady Lake.

Bowles said he heard the plane “spitting and sputtering” during its nosedive, about a mile from the airport.

“It was very quick,” said Tim Beggerly, manager of Athens-Ben Epps Airport. “It was probably just a couple minutes [after takeoff].”

Beggerly witnessed the 52-year-old plane leaving the runway. He said it was headed toward downtown before it lost altitude and turned south.

“[The pilot] was descending instead of climbing,” he said.

Beggerly said the plane was recently sold to buyers who had taken off in another plane seconds before the 1950′s-era Japanese Fuji aircraft left the runway.

“They were really close,” said Brianna Little, a senior at Cedar Shoals High School, who saw the planes from the school’s parking lot. “I thought they were going to crash into our school.”

The plane landed vertically in the densely-forested area, near the property line at 265 Johnson Drive.

“We always talked about it like it was going to happen sometime,” said Ronnie Smith, who rents the house next door.

Smith said planes often fly just 20 or 30 feet above the treeline.

He was not home at the time of the crash, but said earlier Thursday morning he’d been picking up branches and playing with his dog near what would later become the crash site – about 50 yards from the house.

“I knew it was going to happen one day,” Smith said.

Athens-Clarke police Maj. Carter Green said the victims were likely killed on impact. He said mechanical problems were likely to blame.

Kathleen Bergen, spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration, said safety inspectors were dispatched from the FAA office in Atlanta after the accident was reported to compile a field investigation report.

She said the team would look at various aspects of the crash – including pilot qualifications, weather and the plane ruins – to determine what happened.

“Every accident is investigated in depth,” she said, adding that the wreckage would most likely be transported back to Athens-Ben Epps Airport for further investigation.

Athens resident Renata Hailey could see the wreckage from the neighboring yard.

“Looking at the plane, I’m shocked,” she said. “I want to know how it happened – it’s tragic.”