A quiet afternoon on the porch turned into a nightmare for Barbara McLaughlin.
What she saw that plane do will be hard for the Babson Park resident to forget.
"We were watching and we saw the plane. We heard the noise and then we kept looking through the clouds trying to find it," McLaughlin said. "And then it just kind of went down. We didn’t know what happened.”
Then -- smoke.
“We knew they didn’t make it out of that flight there."
McLaughlin's fear was confirmed Thursday evening. The plane crashed in extremeley rural, rugged terrain in southeastern Polk County.
Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd confirmed a family of six was on the plane when it crashed.
Judd said pilot Ronald Bramlage, 45, his wife Rebecca Bramlage, 43, and their four children died when their Pilatus PC-12 crashed in the Tiger Creek Swamp area of rural eastern Polk County.
Judd identified the children as Brandon, 15; Boston, 13; Beau, 11 and Roxanne, 8.
First responders' focus shifted to putting out a fire in the plane's engine. As more crews arrived on off-road vehicles, they were able to put the fire out.
According to flight tracking website FlightAware, the plane took off from Treasure Cay Airport in the Bahamas on Thursday morning at 9:25 a.m. and landed at St. Lucie County International Airport at 10:15 a.m.
The plane flew northwest over Polk County, took a hard turn back to the southeast, turned sharp to the left, flew over more rural area and crashed near Lake Kissimmee. Officials said the aircraft was traveling at approximately 26,000 feet when it first began experiencing trouble.
The plane left the airport at 12:05 p.m. and the first report of a plane down came in at 12:36 p.m. The plane was due to arrive in Junction City, Kansas at 3:41 p.m.
A nearby airport, David Wine’s Airstrip Airport, is located at 2605 Walk-in-Water Road in Lake Wales. Officials have not stated if Bramlage may have been trying to make it to the airstrip.
Witnesses told deputies they heard the plane sputtering, looked up and saw the plane flip and fly upside down. Judd said witnesses saw the plane dive to the ground at a 90-degree angle and a debris trail of three to four miles has been found.
A witness who called 911 described the crash scene to emergency dispatchers.
"He’s advising now black smoke and gas leaking, advised flames at the cockpit of the aircraft," the dispatcher said.
Later in the call, the dispatcher said, "There doesn’t appear to be any survivors. They’re just working on putting out the fire now with the fire extinguisher.”
Judd said that residents in the area should not pick up any of the plane's debris.
"Please do not pick up pieces of the aircraft, call the sheriff's office. We'll send someone to you. We need to mark the exact location of the pieces," he said.