A small plane crashed among trees in Texas Hill Country, killing all five people onboard, officials said on Friday.

The crash happened in the dark late on Thursday night in Wimberley, a city about 40 miles south-west of the state capital, Austin, the Hays county judge, Ruben Becerra, said in a post on Facebook.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said the Cessna 421C crashed around 11.25pm with a pilot and four passengers on board.

“I just heard a loud crash. I felt everything vibrate,” Stacey Rohr, who lives nearby, told local channel KEYE-TV. “Everything was up in flames. It was crazy.”

Cecil Keith said he heard what sounded like an engine backfiring – “pow, pow, pow” – when the plane flew over his house moments before the crash.

“Something was definitely wrong,” he told the TV station.

The plane took off from Amarillo, in north-west Texas, about two hours earlier and was headed to New Braunfels national airport, near Austin, according to the flight history. It crashed not far from its intended destination. Aerial images show the remains of the aircraft destroyed in a wooded area.

Becerra said he would not release the names of the victims until family had been notified.

He said a second aircraft traveling in the area landed safely at the airport in New Braunfels, about 30 miles north-east of San Antonio.

One pilot said he and the Cessna pilot were flying there together, according to air traffic control audio.

“I haven’t heard anything from him,” the pilot says on the recording.

A controller responds: “He started to move erratically and now his track is disappeared from the scope. So we want to make sure everything’s all right with him.”

At least one pilot in the area confirmed the troubled plane’s locator emergency device had emitted a distress signal. The controller called 911.

It was mostly cloudy in the New Braunfels area shortly before the crash and there was a thunderstorm two hours later, the National Weather Service said.

Wimberley, with a population of about 3,000, and New Braunfels, with a population of about 116,000, are both tourist destinations in the Texas Hill Country, drawing hikers attracted to the woody rolling hills and others for tubing on rivers in the area.