First look inside Grade A Auto Parts after deadly UPS plane crash

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Nearly three months after a UPS cargo plane crashed into a Louisville business, we are getting the first look inside the scene where everyone on the ground was killed.

WDRB was taken one-on-one through what remains of Grade A Auto Parts, where 12 of the 15 people who died in the crash were employees and customers inside the business.

Garber said hundreds of people passed through the business every day before the crash. “Even on a cold day like today they’d be here,” said Grade A owner Sean Garber.

“This was our business and now look at it,” he said.

Snow now settles over an empty scrap yard where the building once stood — swallowed by fire after the UPS MD-11 cargo plane went down Nov. 4. The sound of engines still echoes through the space where the business once operated.

Garber’s son, Joey Garber, was there the night of the crash. He was a manager in the family business.

“Everything exploded again when I came to. I was looking at my feet thinking you can’t stand here,” Joey Garber said.

He said he did everything he could to save others.

Fifteen people died as a result of the crash. In addition to the three pilots, the rest were coworkers and customers inside Grade A Auto Parts.

“You can see the path from here,” Sean Garber said.

The plane came down in the checkout area — the last place two workers and several customers were seen alive.

“The landing gear was just sitting right there and everything else was gone,” Garber said.

The aircraft tore through the warehouse next door.

“This is where they were actually standing when the plane crashed,” he said.

Two more employees and multiple customers were killed.

“To lose the customers, to lose the employees — simply like losing family,” Garber said.

Garber said the cockpit and the three pilots were found across the street on Grade A’s property.

The plane flattened fencing and charred rows of cars. Fragments of the MD-11 remain scattered throughout the site.

“To look at this site and know people died here — and they died here avoidably because of another company’s negligence — I don’t know how to put it into words,” Garber said.

When he returned to what was once his livelihood, Garber said the destruction was overwhelming.

“It was indescribable,” he said.

All that remains are charred books from the office and an ATM that somehow is still standing.

“It honors them. It’s a memorial to them right now,” Garber said.

The ATM is now draped in wreaths and ribbons bearing the names of the lives lost— a stoic reminder of the lives lost.

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