PHILADELPHIA (AP) – Three people injured on the ground when a jet crashed in a busy Philadelphia neighbourhood, killing seven people, remain in critical condition, Mayor Cherelle Parker said.
Parker said 22 people were injured and five of them remain hospitalised. 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 on 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 neighbourhood, damaging nearby homes.
The investigation into the crash remained ongoing, Parker said, adding that officials were going door to door to seek information from neighbourhood residents.
The National Transportation Safety Board said that investigators recovered the jet’s cockpit voice recorder at the impact site at a depth of about 2.4 metres. Also recovered was the aircraft’s ground proximity warning system, which could also contain flight data, the agency said on social media. The crash came just two days after the deadliest United States (US) air disaster in a generation, when an American Airlines jet carrying 60 passengers and four crew members collided in midair in Washington, DC, with an Army helicopter carrying three soldiers. There were no survivors.
A busy thoroughfare near the Philadelphia crash site remained closed on Sunday, but police said Roosevelt Boulevard reopened yesterday morning. The neighbourhood known as Castor Gardens is a working-class area of dense row homes, said state Representative Jared Solomon, who grew up there. It’s a busy commercial and residential area crisscrossed by heavy traffic.
“These are just people who want to help others,” Solomon said on Sunday. “They’re nurses, they’re construction workers, they are first responders. In a community that is always poised to help others in and around our city; now we sort of are able to turn inward and all unite together.”
The plane, bound for Tijuana with a scheduled stop in Missouri, had reached about 457 metres before it plummeted to the ground.
