Philly plane crash kills 7, 22 injured
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Three people injured on the ground when a jet crashed in a busy Philadelphia neighborhood, killing seven people, remain in critical condition, Mayor Cherelle Parker said Sunday.
Parker said 22 people were injured and five of them remain hospitalized. At least 11 homes were significantly damaged, along with some businesses.
“Our city continues to mourn their loss and they are in our thoughts and prayers,” Parker said of the deceased.
A Mexico-bound air ambulance plunged to the ground Friday evening, less than a minute after takeoff from Northeast Philadelphia Airport with six people on board, including a girl who had spent months being treated at a city hospital.
One of the dead was killed inside a car as debris from the Learjet 55 crash exploded into the neighborhood, damaging nearby homes.
The investigation into the crash remained ongoing, Parker said, adding that officials were going door to door to seek information from neighborhood residents.
The National Transportation Safety Board said Sunday that investigators recovered the jet’s cockpit voice recorder at the impact site at a depth of about 8 feet.
Also recovered was the aircraft’s ground proximity warning system, which could contain flight data, the agency said on social media.
Flight and victims
The plane, bound for Tijuana with a scheduled stop in Missouri, had reached about 1,500 feet before it plummeted to the ground. National Transportation Safety Board chair Jennifer Homendy called it a “high-impact crash” that left the plane “highly fragmented.” She said NTSB staff would be working to collect debris from the wreckage, a process that could take weeks.
The child had recently completed treatment at Shriners Children’s Philadelphia hospital for a condition not easily treated in Mexico, hospital officials said. Her mother and four crew members also died. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said all six victims on the plane were from her country.
Philadelphia officials and plane owner Jet Rescue Air Ambulance have not disclosed the identities of the dead, but XE Médica Ambulancias, a Mexican emergency service, identified one of the victims as Dr. Raúl Meza of the State of Mexico near Mexico City, the air ambulance company’s chief of neonatology. Relatives of Josué Juárez of Veracruz said he was the aircraft’s co-pilot.
Parker said names of all the deceased victims from Mexico will not be made public until Mexican consulate officials deem it appropriate.
But in Mexico, the Ensenada municipal government confirmed that two of the victims were from that coastal city in Baja California state and identified them as Valentina Guzmán Murillo and her mother, Lizeth Murillo Osuna.