PALATKA, Fla. — A plane crashed in Palatka Mondat and the single person aboard survived.
While rescuers were able to locate the plane, an ambulance could not reach the scene. It was in the woods was less than a mile from the Putnam County Sheriff’s Office.
Captain David Ussery, who has been with the sheriff's office for years, was at headquarters and took off on an all terrain vehicle.
"I rode it from there, the office to the scene because it was proximity," he told First Coast News.
According to the Florida Highway Patrol, the pilot took off from the airport in Palatka, also very close by, there was mechanical trouble with the plane, he tried to circle back but had an emergency landing in the thick woods.
Ussery said, "It's very woodsy, very thick, a lot of underbrush. We were just ground searching."
It was hard to find the plane.
"Usually there is debris. It seemed like on this one, it fell out of the sky," he said.
Dispatchers pinged the pilot’s phone.
"Dispatch, they’re awesome. They got us right to him," Ussery nodded.
He wasn’t the first person to arrive at the plane, but he was close.
The plane was covered in vegetation. "You couldn’t hardly see the plane," Ussery said. Speaking about the first deputies who arrived at the plane, "They had to remove a limb off the plane to even get the door open."
Other first responders got the pilot from Tennessee out of the cockpit, but there was no way an ambulance could get back into the woods. So Captain Ussery carried the pilot on his ATV.
"You could see he was very lethargic, he was bleeding pretty bad. He was pretty beat up," Ussery noted. "I was just asking him if he was ok. We were trying to maneuver out of there."
It was about 600 to 800 feet through bumpy woods. That's a painful ride for the patient.
"We were driving to drive very slow," Ussery recalled. "I was still trying to hold on to him to get him out to the medical personnel. He didn’t have to say anything. You could tell he was still in shock, and you could, just by looking at him and his mannerism was enough. He had been through a lot."
The pilot made it out of the woods and was taken to a hospital for treatment. And Captain Ussery marks this as an example of teamwork.
"Fortunately the men and women I get to work with side by side every day, makes me proud to be a part of these things," Ussery nodded.