He was shaking, bleeding from his forehead, and had just walked away from a crash that killed five people. The first thing the Amazon cargo plane’s pilot did was borrow a stranger’s phone to call his wife.

The crash happened around 2 p.m. on Sunday, September 6, at Miami International Airport. Prime Air Flight 7598, a Boeing 767-300 operated by cargo carrier 21 Air, overran the runway after arriving from San Juan, Puerto Rico. The jet struck a cleaning-crew van carrying seven people and a Toyota SUV before tearing through a perimeter fence.

All five people who died were inside those two vehicles — not on the plane, according to CBS News. Five more were injured, three of them critically.

A Phone Call No One Expected

Abraham Altamar was working nearby, on FaceTime with his wife, when one of the pilots approached him. “He was, like, shaking and, and a little injured in his forehead and his hand,” Altamar told CBS News.

Altamar asked if he needed an ambulance. The pilot said 911 had already been called. Then he asked for something else: to use Altamar’s phone to reach his own wife.

“He was just, like, telling her that he was fine,” Altamar recalled. “‘Just tell my mom that I was in the accident, but I’m already out of the plane, that I’m good.'”

But the pilot wasn’t only relieved to be alive. According to Altamar’s wife, Alexis, who was still on the line, he said something else, too: “My career is over.”

Who Was Flying the Plane

CBS News identified the pilots as Joseph Carroll, 55, and Jaime Felipe Silva Molina, 37, using a Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office release, LinkedIn profiles, and FAA pilot records. Carroll worked as a captain for 21 Air; Silva Molina served as first officer. It remains unclear which of the two men Altamar actually spoke with. Both were treated for injuries and later released.

Neither pilot has been interviewed yet by federal investigators.

What the Black Boxes Might Reveal

The National Transportation Safety Board recovered both of the plane’s black boxes and sent them to Washington, D.C., for analysis. NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy described the crash site in stark terms: “You can see, on the paved surface, tire marks that continue through the grass. There’s debris everywhere.”

Investigators are now examining several possibilities, including whether the aircraft touched down too far along the runway to stop safely, along with brake performance, weather conditions, and the plane’s mechanical condition.

One question drawing particular attention: whether a runway safety system called EMAS — Engineered Materials Arresting System — could have stopped the plane before it reached the fence and the vehicles beyond it. The crushable-material technology is used at more than 70 U.S. airports, but the runway involved in this crash already had a full 1,000-foot safety buffer, meaning it wasn’t required to have EMAS installed.

Why This Matters

Every day, millions of Americans drive, work, and live near the flight paths of the planes overhead — trusting that the space beyond a runway is safe ground. This crash is a reminder that isn’t always guaranteed. The five people killed weren’t passengers or crew; they were on the ground, going about an ordinary Sunday, when a routine landing went catastrophically wrong.

For the pilot who survived, the trauma didn’t end when the plane stopped moving. It followed him into a phone call to his wife — a call that captured, in real time, the collision of relief and devastation that comes with walking away from something others didn’t survive.

The NTSB’s investigation could take months. But for the families who lost someone in those two vehicles, and for a pilot who already knows his career may never be the same, the reckoning has already begun.