The Associated Press

COLUMBUS - Kani Howard was scared Dec. 20 when she heard the plane's engine stop. But a friend reassured her the pilot knew how to glide; and when the engine started again, the 12-year-old girl drifted off to sleep.

Minutes later the engine stopped again and the single-engine plane crashed into a wooded area near Macon, Ga. Kani's mother and three family friends died in the crash.

Kani survived and was treated for only a cracked rib and a small puncture wound to her lung.

"I don't think it was luck, exactly," Kani said Thursday in her first interview since the crash.

"But I feel there was somebody there watching me and helping me through the way," she told the Columbus Dispatch, speaking from her uncle's home in Haines City, Fla.

Kani and her mother, Lisa Lynette Howard, had been offered the trip from their Columbus home to visit relatives in Florida for Christmas.

They were traveling with David and Marilyn Pryor, both of Columbus, who were going to visit relatives in Thomasville, Ga.

Also on the plane was the Pryors' 5-year-old son, DaWit, and Samantha, the 9-month-old Pomeranian that Kani's mother had given her in June.

Mr. Pryor was flying the plane, something he did on a regular basis.

They had been traveling several hours when they encountered turbulence about 8 p.m.

"I heard the engine kind of pop out, then totally stop. And I saw that we kept flying," Kani said.

"I got scared because I didn't know what was happening. But Mrs. Pryor told me that Mr. Pryor knew how to glide."

The engine then came back on for about 10 minutes.

"I started to go to sleep and then it went out again and it never came back on. I thought we were just sailing again," she said.

"Then Mr. Pryor yelled out, `We're hitting a tree!' or `A tree is here!' or something about a tree."

Kani said she doesn't remember the plane crashing.

"I think I got knocked out," she said. "I remember both sides of the plane were gone. And I couldn't see my dog."

She emerged from the wrecked plane to find the tail and cockpit on fire. She saw her mother face-down and thinks she was dead at that time.

"Then I heard DaWit crying. But his legs were stuck under luggage. I tried to lift him but I couldn't. I was asking him to help me. He was like, `I'm trying, I'm trying.'

"That's when I noticed the fire had gotten bigger. I couldn't handle the fire or smoke. I had to back away.

"I remember thinking, `I know I need to get help. But I want to stay here.'"

It was then that Kani started walking. Officials say she walked more than a mile.

"I tried to go one way, but it was getting deeper and darker," Kani said of the woods. "I went the other way and saw an open field and then I saw cars."

A truck driver took Kani to a convenience store, where she had the owner call for help.

Her dog was found uninjured near the road.

The two were reunited at a Georgia hospital, where Kani stayed for two days.

Kani's mother's funeral will be today in Haines City, where many of her 16 brothers and sisters still live.

Funeral arrangements for the Pryors and their son are pending.

Kani's uncle, Henry Howard, said his sister taught Kani to be tough.

"She raised Kani to be very strong and independent and very opinionated," he said.

Kani, a seventh-grader at Columbus Academy, will return to Columbus to finish school and then live with her father, Wendell Webster of Jacksonville, Fla.

"I think this is nothing less than a miracle. I don't think you see many people walking away from a plane crash," Mr. Webster said.

"She doesn't fully comprehend how special she is to have walked away from this."