Delray pilot was one of 7 taken to hospital after Palm Beach County plane crash

A pilot from Delray Beach was one of two people aboard a small plane that hit a palm tree, then crashed into a moving car with five people inside near John Prince Park Campground in Lake Worth Beach on Monday.

The Orlican M8 Eagle took off from the nearby Palm Beach County Park Airport in Lantana shortly before 4:30 p.m., minutes before it crashed. After taking off, the plane made a turn to the north, experienced some sort of issue and started to fall from the sky, according to a Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office report released Wednesday.

All seven people avoided any serious injury.

The plane first hit a palm tree in the 3800 block of Lake Osborne Drive and continued dropping until it crashed into a 2020 Toyota Camry that was driving east on the road, the report said. It then hit the park’s fencing and came to a stop on the sidewalk just out of the roadway.

All five people inside the Toyota — three women, an 11-year-old boy and a 9-year-old boy, all from Greenacres — were taken to Bethesda Hospital East in Boynton Beach as a precaution.

Palm Beach County Fire Rescue treated the two men inside the plane at the scene before taking them to St. Mary’s Medical Center in West Palm Beach as trauma alerts, the report said. They were identified as Duncan Maclaren, 29, of Delray Beach, and Thomas Peters, 51, of Oranjestad, Aruba.

The report does not make clear which of the men was flying the plane. Federal Aviation Administration records show Maclaren is a licensed commercial pilot with his certificate issued in 2022.

The plane, owned by the company Valiair LC Trustee in Ogden, Utah, was in South Florida for routine maintenance before returning to its base abroad, CEO Marco M. Reininger said in a statement.