By Staff Report | NASCAR.com
Dale Earnhardt Jr., wife Amy and daughter Isla were safe and taken to a hospital for evaluation following a plane crash on Thursday afternoon in Elizabethton, Tennessee, Earnhardt’s sister, Kelley Earnhardt Miller, confirmed via Twitter.
Earnhardt Jr.’s plane, a Cessna Citation, rolled off the end of Runway 24 and caught fire after landing at Elizabethton Municipal Airport in Tennessee at 3:40 p.m. ET, according to a report from the Federal Aviation Administration.
The aircraft registration is N8JR, which is the plane registered to Earnhardt Jr., according to FAA.gov.
Earnhardt Jr. is an analyst for NBC Sports and was traveling to Bristol Motor Speedway for this weekend’s races.
“I got here within five minutes, and the airplane was fully engulfed (in flames), Carter County Sheriff Dexter Lunsford said during an evening news conference. “All of the people were out of it … Five occupants, no one’s injured. Under the circumstances, we’re extremely blessed and fortunate.”
Elizabethton Fire Department Chief Barry Carrier confirmed that Earnhardt was talking to EMS staff and the family was transported to a local hospital in a non-emergency capacity.
“They were very lucky,” Carrier said. “The plane is pretty much destroyed.”
The FAA said in a statement that it will investigate the accident.
NBC Sports PR later released on social media that Dale Jr. would not be in the booth this weekend at Bristol but would return in two weeks at Darlington.
NBC Sports statement on Dale Earnhardt Jr.:
By evening, flights had resumed at the small airport tucked into the Tennessee hills, even as the events from just hours earlier had cast a national spotlight onto the normally quiet town.
“Nothing like this,” Lunceford said. “We have robberies, burglaries, pursuits, things of that sort. Armed people. We just have the standard, usual calls in a population somewhere between 58 and 60 thousand. … We stay busy, but no, nothing like this.”
Contributing: Zack Albert in Elizabethton, Tenn.
