2 dead after small plane carrying relief supplies for Jamaica crashes in Florida

A small turboprop plane on a hurricane relief mission to Jamaica crashed Monday morning into a pond in a gated residential neighborhood of the Fort Lauderdale suburb of Coral Springs, killing two people shortly after takeoff and narrowly missing homes, authorities and a local resident said.The Coral Springs Police Department confirmed the deaths in a statement Monday afternoon. But police did not provide further details about the occupants of the plane and did not immediately return messages seeking more details.Coral Springs-Parkland Fire Department Deputy Chief Mike Moser said emergency crews responded within minutes of a call reporting the crash. Initially, no victims were located during rescue efforts, and they shifted to a recovery operation. Moser said no homes were damaged, but crews spotted some debris near the retention pond. Local aerial televised footage showed a broken fence in the backyard of one home bordering the pond where the plane went down.“There was no actual plane to be seen,” Moser said. “They followed the debris trail to the water. We had divers that entered the water and tried to search for any victims and didn’t find any.”Kenneth DeTrolio told the South Florida Sun Sentinel that he and his wife were in their home when the plane crashed through their backyard, destroying his fence and toppling palm trees before hitting the water. He said the impact left debris scattered across his yard and that his pool and back porch were “contaminated” with spilled fuel.The fuel smell was so strong inside his home that it took a few hours to dissipate, he added.“We heard the strangest sound. I never heard anything like it before, and apparently that was when this plane must have flown between my home and my neighbor’s house,” DeTrolio told the newspaper.Officials cautioned residents that police would maintain a significant presence in the area throughout Monday and Tuesday as investigators continue collecting evidence.Broward County, where the plane took off from and where the crash occurred, is home to a vibrant Caribbean American community that sprang into action to collect relief supplies following Hurricane Melissa. A powerful Category 5 hurricane , Melissa slammed into Jamaica late last month, leaving a path of destruction.Moser said police would take over recovery efforts, and federal aviation officials would investigate the cause of the crash.The small Beechcraft King Air plane took off from the Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport at approximately 10:14 a.m., according to a spokesperson for the city of Fort Lauderdale, which owns and operates the airport. The crash occurred soon after takeoff, with Coral Springs police officers and firefighters responding at 10:19 a.m., just five minutes later.According to Federal Aviation Administration records, the plane was manufactured in 1976. King Air models can seat between seven and 12 people, according to the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association.Federal records showed the registered owner of the plane is listed as International Air Services, a company that markets itself as specializing in providing trust agreements to non-U.S. citizens that enable them to register their aircraft with the FAA. A person who answered the company’s phone Monday afternoon declined to answer questions from a reporter, stating “no comment” and ending the phone call.The flight tracking website FlightAware shows the plane made four other trips to or from Jamaica in the past week, traveling between George Town in the Cayman Islands and Montego Bay and Negril in Jamaica, before landing in Fort Lauderdale on Friday. It was not immediately clear who was organizing the trips.Hurricane Melissa made landfall in Jamaica on Oct. 28, tied for the strongest landfalling Atlantic hurricane in history. The storm also caused devastation in Cuba, Haiti and the Dominican Republic and prompted relief organizations to mobilize.Local government officials in Jamaica said in the days after the storm that Melissa had ripped the roofs off 120,000 structures, affecting some 90,000 families in the island’s especially hard-hit western region. A week after Melissa’s landfall in Jamaica, more than 2,000 people were still reported to be in shelters. By KATE PAYNE and DAVID FISCHER, Associated Press

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