experienced air racing pilot and a stunt pilot for movies. he is considered to be among the dead. as of right now, we have three confirmed dead. renowned medical center nearby the crash site confirmed that two people who they have seen after this event tonight have died in addition to the pilot. a spokeswoman tells the associated press tonight that emergency crews and there appear to have been dozens of ambulances on scene taking people to local hospitals, emergency crews took a total of 56 victims to three area hospitals. those are the 56 people that went in ambulances, who went in emergency response vehicles. the spokesperson for the regional medical service authority also says that in addition to those 56, a number of other people were transported away from the crash site and presumably to hospitals who were in private vehicles. so those are those people transported by private vehicle
that are equipped to gather the information and then disseminate the information and work through the emergency process. was part of his family here today? did they witness the crash? yes, sir. they did? how many members of the family? i m not sure how many were here. jimmy s got a pretty good sized family. can you talk about the acceptance of the risk of the pilots that they take when they get in the planes to fly every year? every race pilot understands the risks. they are perhaps the best pilots in the entire world. they re most of them are very skilled and very experienced at doing this. particularly of aviation, you fly in an airplane, there are certain risks just as in taking off and landing. when you add the other dimension of racing, it s it s a fast sport. and it s not unlike indianapolis or nascar. i m trying to understand how
is this the first time a crash involved spectators? yes, it is. [ inaudible ] it was in the grand stands, it was on the tarmac, the area where we have box seats. a little bit left of center. going forward, do you have any idea whether people will remain seated there or is that something you ll look at in the coming years? that s way too far in advance for us to look at. you are talk together pilots that were also in this heat that maybe were in the race, are they adding any insights? we vohaven t gotten any feedback from them. we re having meetings tomorrow to discuss a number of these issues. can you talk about what he meant to that area, to the community? he was a close personal friend. well liked. jimmy was jimmy. great guy, great family man. a very active member of the
critical. plus, they re reporting two deaths plus the presumed death of the pilot. at this hour we await an imminent press conference on scene from the air base in reno, nevada, again the site to have night s crash. as that happens tonight, we ll bring that you to here live here on msnbc. we re centurylink.
then it nosed over and went straight down. eyewitness reports to tonight s plane crash at the reno air races. again, what we know at this hour is a vintage world wore ii aircraft p-51 mustang. the pilot who was presumed dead, obviously, after the scale of this impact was an 80-year-old pilot. but a very, very, very experienced pilot who had been a stunt pilot in movies and ran a respected air racing team called the leeward air ranch racing team. his name is jimmy leeward. he was a real estate developer based in ocala, florida. we have a report from one nevada health center that two of the people there as injured persons after this crash have died. that renowned health center has seen 22 patients in all, nine in