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A small plane carrying three people had made six attempts to land in the thick fog around New York City on Sunday night and was heading for a seventh before it ran out of fuel above Long Island.

The plane, a Cessna 172, was not going to make it to an airport, and as it hurtled instead toward a residential area in suburban Valley Stream, N.Y., a disaster seemed imminent.

The aircraft first clipped the roof of a church, then several power lines, local officials said, before becoming entangled in the cables like a fly in a web, suspended a foot above the front lawn of a brick home.

When the Nassau County police arrived at the scene, they found the plane dangling from the utility cables, nose down, hovering as if freeze-framed a second before tragedy. The pilot and two passengers, mostly unharmed, were sitting on a nearby curb.