Seven-year-old stuns 71-year-old when she knocks on his door seeking help from plane crash in Kentucky
Girl, 7, climbs out of wreckage and walks about a kilometre through dense woods to get help after her parents, sister and cousin were killed
Larry Wilkins was watching the evening news when he heard a knock on his door. Standing on his porch was a thin, black-haired girl, whimpering and trembling.
It was seven-year-old Sailor Gutzler, who said through her tears that she had just been in an airplane crash.
Stunned, Wilkins, 71, took the child in, put her on his couch and called 911, the emergency number in the United States. His two dachshunds, Pete and Bonnie, comforted her until police and an ambulance arrived 10 minutes later, he said on Saturday.
Through her jitters and crying, Wilkins said he pieced together that the girl had climbed out from the wreckage and walked almost a kilometre through dense forest littered with fallen hickory trees, wearing only a short-sleeve shirt, shorts and no shoes in near-freezing temperatures when she saw a light in the distance. That beacon was Wilkins' home.
"I come to the door, and there's a little girl, 7 years old, bloody nose, bloody arms, bloody legs, one sock, no shoes, crying," Wilkins, 71, said. "She told me that her mom and dad were dead, and she had been in a plane crash, and the plane was upside down."
In shorts and a T-shirt, Sailor was dressed for Florida, where her family's plane had come from. Her arms and legs were scratched; one of her wrists was broken. "I just can't imagine a seven-year-old girl with enough spunk to walk through the woods after all that. That is something else," he said. "You give her all the credit."
Authorities said the girl - identified on Saturday by a family spokesman - was the only survivor of a small plane crash in southwestern Kentucky on Friday night that killed her parents, sister and a cousin.
She was released from the hospital on Saturday as investigators converged at the scene of the wreckage, police said.
When the small plane crashed into the woods, Sailor called out to her family. No one responded. She thought they might be unconscious, or possibly dead. Either way, police said, she knew she needed to get help.
The Gutzler family members - Marty Gutzler, 48, Kimberly Gutzler, 46, their daughter Piper, 9, and her cousin Sierra Wilder, 14 - were flying from Key West, Florida to Mount Vernon, Illinois, when the small plane crashed in the woods near Kuttawa, Kentuky, police said.
The bodies have been sent to Louisville for autopsies.
"We are devastated by this loss, but are confident that they rest in God's loving arms," family spokesman Kent Plotner said. "Please pray for us, especially for Sailor Gutzler."
"It's just really a miracle," Kentucky State Police Lieutenant Brent White, speaking to reporters, said of Sailor's survival.
Officials said it would take at least two days to complete the crash investigation.
The plane reported engine trouble and lost contact with air traffic controllers shortly before the 5.55pm, authorities said.
Controllers tried to direct the pilot to an airport 8km to 11km from the crash scene, the authorities said.
Neighbours said Marty and Kim Gutzler had lifelong roots in the largely rural southern Illinois town, which is about 80km east of St. Louis, Missouri.
Marty ran the furniture store that his father started, and the couple was well-known and well-liked, said neighbour Carla Povolish.
She said the two sisters - Sailor and Piper - were together constantly.
"That's what's going to be so devastating for the little one," she said.
