NEW YORK -- Ilana Benhuri remembers the first thing that popped into her mind: "I was dead.''
The 50-year-old mother of three, miraculously still alive, walked Friday out of a Manhattan hospital where she spent 30 painful days recovering from severe burns suffered when late New York Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle's plane smashed nose-first into her 40th floor apartment.
"The explosion threw me up in the air,'' Benhuri said at a news conference outside the New York Presbyterian-Weill Cornell Medical Center, recounting her near-death experience. "I was screaming. I could not stop screaming. I did not know what it was.'' 1010 WINS Audio:Juliet Papa Reports in Manhattan
The minutes before Lidle's plane struck the Upper East Side high-rise were part of a mundane weekday afternoon. Benhuri was baking an apple pie for her 12-year-old daughter's school, and doing some paperwork at a desk in her four-bedroom apartment.
Benhuri never saw the plane approaching her building as it vainly attempted to make a turn above the East River. Her housekeeper did see the plane, and rushed into the room with a warning. As the pair tried to flee, Lidle's plane crashed through the apartment wall, setting off a fireball and explosion.
Benhuri, who suffered burns below her waist, managed to run down the building stairs to safety, accompanied by housekeeper Eveline Reategue. During her month in the hospital after the Oct. 11 crash, Benhuri underwent surgery and multiple skin grafts.
"She's still in pain,'' said her attorney, Bob Sullivan, who added that a lawsuit was likely against Lidle's estate.
Federal investigators said the inability of the plane's pilot to turn sharply in a light wind was responsible for the crash of the Cirrus SR20. Lidle and flight instructor Tyler Stanger were both killed in the crash.
Authorities have not said whether they could determine which man was at the controls of the doomed plane.
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"The explosion threw me up in the air,'' Benhuri said at a news conference outside the New York Presbyterian-Weill Cornell Medical Center, recounting her near-death experience. "I was screaming. I could not stop screaming. I did not know what it was.''
Federal investigators said the inability of the plane's pilot to turn sharply in a light wind was responsible for the crash of the Cirrus SR20. Lidle and flight instructor Tyler Stanger were both killed in the crash. 
