A Crop-Spraying Piper Pawnee Crashed Into a Brazilian Daycare That Serves 180 Children. Only the Pilot Was Hurt.

A single-engine agricultural plane registered PT-DVD came down behind the Cora Coralina daycare in Campo Verde, in Brazil’s Mato Grosso state, on the afternoon of Friday, October 23, 2026. The daycare serves about 180 children aged 1 to 5, and none of them, or of its staff, was hurt.

The 28-year-old pilot, the only person on board, was the one casualty. Security camera footage of the impact, published by MidiaNews, has since been picked up by outlets outside Brazil.

What happened in Campo Verde

Mato Grosso’s Military Fire Department (CBMMT) said its crews were called at about 2:30 pm local time. The plane came down at the back of the daycare, about 400 meters (a quarter mile) from the airstrip, in a town about 83 miles (134 km) from the state capital, Cuiabá.

Before it reached the daycare, the aircraft struck the roof of a neighboring public health clinic, according to the city government. Nobody at the clinic was hurt, and it reopened on the afternoon of Monday, October 26.

The footage shows the plane breaking through a wall of the daycare in a cloud of dust and debris. The city’s Education Department said the part of the building it hit is not used by the children, and that teachers and staff evacuated them safely and handed them back to their families.

The department also said the aircraft was not carrying any agricultural chemicals at the time. The fire department did report a fuel leak, so crews isolated the area and kept a firefighting team on standby against a fire.

Firefighters found the pilot conscious and sitting outside the impact area, with a head wound, swelling and a chest deformity. He was taken to the Hospital Municipal Coração de Jesus and later moved to a hospital in Rondonópolis, the city said. Local outlets reported that he was discharged over the weekend of October 24 and 25.

Classes at the daycare were suspended while the damaged building is repaired. Three fire department vehicles and an ambulance crew responded, with police and civil defense helping secure the site.

The aircraft: a 1971 Piper Pawnee

The registration was reported by Agora MT, which said the plane came down after takeoff. Brazil’s aircraft register, run by the civil aviation agency ANAC, lists PT-DVD as a Piper PA-25 Pawnee, model PA-25-260, built in 1971, with Pulvaer Aero Agrícola among its operators.

That makes it an American-built, single-seat crop sprayer, not the Brazilian Embraer Ipanema, the type behind what the Sindag fleet survey describes as Embraer’s historical lead in the country’s agricultural fleet.

Piper built 5,167 Pawnees between 1959 and 1981, to a design by Fred Weick. The pilot sits high in the fuselage with the chemical hopper mounted ahead of the cockpit, and the 260 hp version flown here uses a Lycoming O-540 engine.

Crop-spraying work is flown low and heavy, which is why it carries real risks for pilots. The plane was not carrying chemicals when it crashed, according to the city, so whether it was outbound to a job or on another flight is not known.

A crash in Brazil’s farm aviation heartland

Mato Grosso is the heart of Brazil’s farm aviation. A survey by Sindag, the trade association for agricultural aviation companies, counted 2,866 crewed agricultural aircraft in Brazil at the end of 2025, second only to the United States.

Mato Grosso alone held 803 of them, more than any other state, according to Agrolink’s report on the survey. Spraying operators work out of strips across the state, and in Campo Verde this one sat close enough to town for a plane in trouble to reach public buildings.

The cause of the crash has not been made public. Investigators from CENIPA, the Brazilian Air Force’s accident investigation center, examined the site and the wreck has since been removed, Única News reported on October 26.

CENIPA is the same agency that produced the final report on the Voepass crash.

At the time of writing, no official account had addressed why the plane came down, whether the engine failed, or what the pilot reported. Until investigators speak, the one settled fact is the outcome: a plane went through a daycare wall, and every child was led out unhurt.