NEW YORK -- Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle died in an airplane accident in New York City on Wednesday afternoon when a plane he was piloting crashed into a 50-story building on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.
Reports indicated that the plane took off from Teterboro Airport in New Jersey around 2:30 p.m. ET, crashing into the 40th floor of the East 72nd Street building roughly 15 minutes later. According to a Federal Aviation Administration official, the plane had issued a distress call before the crash.
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said that two people on the plane were killed, but nobody in the building or on the street died in the accident. FAA officials said the two dead were a flight instructor and a student pilot.
