Neighbors who ran to Grace Stearns' house, drawn by a huge crash, discovered the 68-year-old woman not only safe after a helicopter plowed into her garage but unaware of what had happened.
"She thought something fell in the attic," her son, Tim Stearns, said as he surveyed the wreckage from the Monday afternoon accident."She came out, she was crying, `My house, my house,' " said Vito Ventrella. "She's lucky she was alive."
All four people aboard the helicopter were killed. Neighbors found it crushed on its roof amid the wreckage of two smashed cars, wood and shingles.
The low-flying helicopter - a Bell Textron 206 - may have been trying to make an emergency landing in the tree-lined neighborhood when it struck the attached garage of the brick ranch home, investigators said.