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CHICAGO (CBS) ― Tow truck driver Mahdi Abdelqader was driving near Midway International Airport when a loud boom got his attention. He looked around and saw a Southwest Airlines jet that had been trying to land in heavy snow crash through a barrier and come to a stop atop a car on the street.

He left his truck and ran to the scene. "The people in the car were screaming 'Help, Help,"' Abdelqader said Friday about Thursday night's accident.

He said a man was able to get out of the car but a woman and two children in back couldn't. A 6-year-old boy from Indiana who was riding in the car was killed and at least 10 other people were injured.

Abdelqader said he went over to the plane, its nose resting on the ground, and told the captain through a window that he smelled fuel.

"I didn't know what to do. I wanted to help them, but at the same time I was scared because I thought at any moment the plane could go up in flames," said Abdelqader, who lives in the Chicago suburb of Burbank.

The Boeing 737 and the vehicles it collided with remained in the street Friday morning.

National Transportation Safety Board member Ellen Engleman Conners said the accident investigation could take a year. The plane's flight data and cockpit recorders are on their way to Washington for review.

The plane won't be moved from where it came to rest on Central Avenue near 55th Street until Saturday or Sunday, Engleman Conners said.

"We're going to look at where it is, where it was, how it got there," she said during a news conference Friday at the airport.

She said toxicology tests also had been ordered for the plane's pilots, which Southwest said included a 59-year-old pilot who has been with the airline for 10-plus years and a 35-year-old first officer who has flown with them for 2 1/2 years.

"It is too early for me, and certainly inappropriate for Southwest, to speculate as to a cause," before the NTSB completes its investigation, Southwest CEO Gary Kelly told reporters at Midway.

Airline spokesman Ed Stewart said Southwest officials had been in contact with the family of the boy who was killed.

Midway, which was shut down Thursday night, reopened at 6 a.m. Friday, less than 11 hours after the accident.

Flight 1248 from Baltimore touched down at Midway, Chicago's second largest airport after O'Hare International Airport, about 7:15 Thursday night. Though the airport had about 7 inches of snow, aviation officials said conditions at the time were acceptable. The plane skidded off the end of the runway and across a grassy area before it slammed through a barrier and into the street. The plane hit one vehicle and pinned another beneath it.

The 6-year-old, who had been in the vehicle trapped under the plane, was identified as Joshua Woods of Leroy, Ind., said Sandra Flowers of the Cook County Medical Examiner's office.

Kelly said Friday morning it was the first fatal accident involving a Southwest flight in the carrier's 35-year history.

Passenger Mike Abate, 35, of suburban Milwaukee, said he could see from the plane that a man was carrying an injured child and that other people were taken away in an ambulance.

"We were safe on the plane," Abate said. "The toughest part was to realize that someone was under the belly of the plane."

Five crew and 98 passengers were aboard, authorities said. Most were evacuated through the plane's inflatable slides in blowing snow, while others used stairs at the rear of the plane, said Chicago Fire Department Spokesman Larry Langford. The plane's nose was crushed, and a severely damaged engine was strewn on the ground, he said.

Of the 10 injuries reported, eight were on the ground and two were in the plane.

Two adults and three children, the boy who died, were riding in the pinned vehicle and were taken to Advocate Christ Hospital. Three people were treated and released by Friday morning, while one remained at the hospital, said spokesman Mike Maggio. He said the family had asked that the remaining patient's condition not be released.

Three victims from the other car were released and a fourth was in good condition at Holy Cross Hospital, spokeswoman Michelle Boyd said.

Two plane passengers were treated and released from MacNeal Hospital in Berwyn, hospital spokeswoman Esther Corpuz said. The tow truck driver who stopped to help plane passengers also was treated and released for a foot injury, Corpuz said.

Southwest CEO Kelly said the plane had circled Midway for 30 to 35 minutes because of the weather and the flight traffic before it was cleared for landing on the airport's 6,500-foot runway. The airport, surrounded by homes and businesses, has shorter runways than most major airports, because it was originally built to handle smaller propeller planes. The larger ones land at O'Hare.

"There are no indications that there are any maintenance problems with that aircraft whatsoever," Kelly said. He said the plane had a service check Wednesday in Phoenix.

Stewart, the Southwest spokesman, said the plane, which was delivered to them last year "is practically brand new.

Stewart said Southwest has had flight operations out of Midway for 20 years.

"This is an extremely safe operation, we just don't have problems here," he said.

The city of Chicago's acting aviation commissioner, Pat Harney, said snow removal operations had been going on continuously at the airport before the accident. When the plane landed, there was 1/16 of an inch of snow on the runway, a level he called "acceptable."

He said the barrier the plane went through serves primarily as a noise barrier and is designed to break away.

Snow caused trouble Thursday for travelers across the Midwest, with as much as 10 inches on the ground in some areas. The system was moving eastward early Friday.

The accident occurred 33 years to the day after a crash at Midway that killed 45 people, two of them on the ground.

In that crash, a United Airlines jet struck tree branches about a mile from the airport, then hit the roofs of a number of bungalows before plowing into a home, bursting into flames. Eighteen passengers survived.

(© 2005 CBS Worldwide Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)