MANCHESTER, N.H. (AP) – A small cargo plane with only the pilot on board crashed into a Wal-Mart garden center a mile from Manchester Airport on Tuesday. The pilot walked away and was hospitalized in fair condition.

The store, which had about 40 workers and an unknown number of shoppers, was evacuated after the twin-engine Embraer clipped a greenhouse, then flew into some metal storage trailers at 7:20 a.m. Numerous boxes from the plane and the trailers were strewn about the area. There were no known injuries on the ground and the main building wasn’t damaged, fire officials said. A Wal-Mart manager said the store would re-open Wednesday.

“I just saw a huge ball of smoke go up,” said Maria Kosmakata, who was driving to her job at a nearby Saturn auto dealership.

The Federal Aviation Administration said the plane was bound for Bangor, Maine.

Paul Seyler-Schmidt, 32, of Bangor, “was walking out, a lot of blood on his head, (and) appeared to have a broken leg,” said Rick Osgood, a worker at a nearby Saturn dealership who went to the crash.

Jim Hill, who lives near the airport, said the plane tried approaching the north runway of the airport, but it struck the Wal-Mart. Seyler-Schmidt was “trying to get back to the airport as quickly as possible, but there was definitely one engine out and it was too low,” Hill said.

Seyler-Schmidt was listed in fair condition at Elliot Hospital.

“I am extremely grateful to all the people who helped me at the scene of the plane crash this morning, including the Good Samaritans who helped me immediately after the crash and the emergency personnel who treated me,” he said in a statement released by the hospital Tuesday evening.

Seyler-Schmidt, who had recently moved to Maine from Wilmington, N.C., and has been flying for over 10 years, was delivering cargo on a routine run for United Parcel Service, said Robin Outwater of AirNow, the Bennington, Vt.-based company that operates the plane.

“He apparently experienced mechanical difficulty during takeoff and attempted to circle back and land at the airport,” Outwater said.

A spokesman at Manchester Airport said the flights were uninterrupted by the crash.

Police believed the curiosity factor at the scene may have contributed to a four-car accident on Route 101. There were no injuries.

An Air Force test pilot died in the same area in 1998 when his plane crashed in a sandpit near the site of Tuesday’s crash. Col. John Childress of Columbia, S.C., was credited with preventing the plane from crashing into nearby businesses.

In January, the pilot of an AirNow plane was killed when his aircraft crashed in heavy fog at Dillant Hopkins Airport in Swanzey.

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