First Responders Adopt Dogs They Rescued from Plane Crash in Wisconsin: 'Fell Out of the Sky'

Mar. 15, 2025

First responders who rescued 53 dogs from a plane crash in Wisconsin last week have welcomed the canines into their homes.

On Tuesday, a large twin-engine aircraft from Louisiana that was transporting the dogs to shelters in southeast Wisconsin ran into troubles,causing the plane to crash on a golf courseat the Western Lakes Golf Club in Pewaukee, multiple outlets reported.

Days later, the officials who responded to the incident volunteered to adopt the dogs.

“As soon as I found out all of them were OK, my first thought was thatone of them is coming home with me. So this is my little Lucky,” Elle Steitzer, a firefighter and EMT at Lake Country Fire Rescue, told WISN while holding her newly adopted puppy.

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Steitzer adopted the dog on Friday, along with two of her other coworkers from the Lake Country Fire Rescue.

While showing off her new canine companion, Amber Christian, a firefighter and paramedic at the department told WISN that her new dog Artemis “just kind of fell out of the sky in front of me, so here he is.”

“We normally don’t let people adopt until we have them up on our website because we want to give anybody as fair of a chance as possible,” said Stephanie Deswarte, a front desk manager at Elmbrook. “But since they were obviously in the thick of it, and they did such a great job trying to help with the whole crazy situation, we gave all first responders first dibs, so to speak, to adopt before they went up on the website.”

At a news conference on Tuesday, Matthew Haerter, assistant chief at Lake Country Fire and Rescue, praised the pilot involved in the crash, telling reporters: “This was a relatively catastrophic landing,” according to theWashington Post.

source: people.com