All nine people on board a Learjet were killed on Sunday when the aircraft crashed into a neighbourhood in southern Florida, a few miles from United States President Donald Trump’s resort home, officials said.
Naija News reports that the plane went down near Cresthaven, a neighbourhood in Palm Beach County less than seven miles from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.
The US Transportation Secretary, Sean Duffy, confirmed the deaths in a statement, describing the incident as a horrific tragedy.
He said the aircraft, a Learjet 60, took off from Austin, Texas, and was bound for the Bahamas.
Unverified videos shared on social media showed the plane plunging almost vertically at high speed before hitting the ground, sending up a huge fireball and leaving a burning crater near a busy road.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who spoke with reporters near the scene, described the crash as catastrophic.
“Obviously this is a cataclysmic plane crash. It looked like a missile going down,” he said.
He added that no one on the ground was reported injured.
Palm Beach County Commissioner, Joel Flores, said the plane crashed near the entrance of a mobile home park, adding that about 600 residents were evacuated to shelters.
The Federal Aviation Administration said it would investigate the crash alongside the National Transportation Safety Board.
Trump, who had been at Mar-a-Lago, left from the nearby President Donald J. Trump International Airport aboard Air Force One at 11.55 am, about an hour before the crash.
Storms had been reported in the area, and the President was seen carrying an umbrella as he boarded the plane.
In an audio recording posted on the air traffic website, liveatc.net, a voice from the cockpit could be heard reporting moderate turbulence and saying the crew was “managing the ice.”
The person said the aircraft was “picking up precipitation” and needed to climb, before declaring, “Mayday, mayday, we’re descending 10,000 feet per minute.”
Seconds later, the voice declared an emergency as the plane’s descent rate rose to 20,000 feet per minute.
“We’re going to crash into the ground,” the person said, shortly before communication was lost.
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