The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is investigating the crash of a small experimental aircraft in North Georgia that claimed the lives of two men Thursday night.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that the aircraft, a single-engine RV-7 kit plane, went down at around 7:45 pm on Thursday, right in the middle of the Austin Harbor subdivision located near Lake Lanier in Forsyth County.

The county’s 911 center reportedly received several calls from residents in the area who heard and watched the plane hit the ground.

“It sounded like a lawn mower that was running out of gas. You could the engine and then a sputtering sound and then the engine sounded like it was trying to turn over again and a sputtering sound. And then there was a thud,” Forsyth County resident Sara Vogel told Fox Atlanta.

Friday morning, local coroner Lauren McDonald identified the victims as 45-year-old Don Hall and 40-year-old David Schorr.

Officials with the Forsyth County Sheriff’s Department said the men were killed on impact.

Despite the lives lost in crash, local residents say the death toll from the accident could have been much worse.

According to MyFoxAtlanta, the RV-7 went down just 100 feet away from a local church which was holding a service at the time of the accident and had about a dozen people inside.

“God is always with us, but our prayers tonight, we’ve been praying for the families of the two people that passed,” said Reverend John Martin of Deer Creek Shores Presbyterian Church.

For more information on the Forsyth Country plane crash, watch the video below:

Forsyth County Plane Crash: Two Die When Experimental Plane Goes Down In North Georgia [Video] is a post from: The Inquisitr