Mother, two babies killed in inferno after private jet crashes into their house
PUBLISHED : Tuesday, 09 December, 2014, 11:41am
UPDATED : Tuesday, 09 December, 2014, 5:38pm
Associated Press in Maryland
Firefighters stand outside the gutted house in Gaithersburg, Maryland. Photo: AP
A woman and her two young sons were killed when a private jet fell our of the sky and crashed into their house in a US suburb on Monday, authorities said.
Three other people aboard the jet were also killed in the crash in Gaithersburg, a Washington suburb, at around 10.45am local time. The airplane was under two kilometres of its destination.
The family who died inside the two-storey, wood-framed house were identified as 36-year-old Marie Gemmell and her two sons, three-year-old Cole and month-old baby Devon, police said. It took hours for fire crews to sweep the home and confirm that the three were inside.
They were found in a second-floor bathroom. Gemmell was lying on top of her young sons in an apparent effort to shield them from the smoke and fire, said police Captain Paul Starks.
Her husband and a school-age daughter were not home and were accounted for, police said.
The fuselage of the jet crashed into the front lawn of an adjacent home, which was also heavily damaged by fire. No one was injured.
Investigators believe one of its wings, which had fuel inside, was sheared off and tore through the front of the Gemmell home, said Robert Sumwalt, a National Transportation Safety Board member.
The wreckage of the jet. Authorities believe the fuel-charged wing smashed into the Gemmells' home. Photo: AP
Witnesses reported seeing and hearing a secondary explosion after the plane hit the ground.
A National Transportation Safety Board team is investigating the crash.
The founder and CEO of a North Carolina clinical research organisation was among those on the executive jet. Health Decisions of Durham, North Carolina, said in a news release that Dr Michael Rosenberg was among those killed.
Rosenberg was a pilot who crashed a different plane in Gaithersburg on March 1, 2010, according to a government official who was not authorised to speak publicly and asked not to be named. Investigators are still trying to determine if Rosenberg was at the controls at the time of Monday’s crash.
Fred Pedreira, 67, who lives near the crash site, said he had just returned home and was parking his car when he saw the jet and immediately knew something was wrong.
“This guy, when I saw him, for a fast jet with the wheels down, I said, ‘I think he’s coming in too low,”‘ Pedreira said. “Then he was 90 degrees – sideways – and then he went belly-up into the house and it was a ball of fire. It was terrible.
A National Transportation Safety Board team is investigating the crash. Photo: Reuters
“I tell you, I got goosebumps when I saw it,” Pedreira said. “I said, ‘My God, those are people in that plane.”‘
The Embrarer EMB-500/Phenom 100 twin-engine jet, which seats six people, was on approach to Montgomery County Airpark, which is about 1.6 kilometres from the crash site, officials said. A team of NTSB investigators recovered the cockpit voice and flight data recorders from the downed plane.
The agency planned to look into everything that could have led to the crash, including crew experience and proficiency, training and procedures, equipment performance, weather and other environmental factors such as birds, the NTSB’s Sumwalt said.
