Small plane crashes near Maryland airport, killing six

Tuesday, December 9, 2014

A small jet has crashed in Gaithersburg, Maryland near Montgomery County Airpark yesterday at about 10:45 a.m. local time (1545 UTC), causing a house fire. Officials said six people were killed in the accident — three in the plane and three on the ground.

Montgomery County's fire chief said all three people aboard the plane were killed in the crash. According to reports, the plane broke apart. In all, a total of three houses were damaged, according to the fire chief. There were some residents in the damaged house who were not accounted for until about 4:30 p.m. when emergency personnel confirmed that three people inside the house were also killed. Witnesses to the accident reported seeing the plane wobble a couple hundred feet above the ground and do a barrel roll.

The plane, identified as an Embraer EMB-500/Phenom 100, was apparently on approach to Montgomery County Airpark when it crashed. According to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the plane was in line with runway 14 at the airport. It was registered to an aviation company owned by one the victims, Michael Rosenberg — Sage Aviation LLC based out of Chapel Hill, North Carolina — according to authorities.

Among those killed in were Rosenberg, president and CEO of clinical research firm Health Decisions; 36-year-old Marie Gemmell; and her two sons, Cole and Devon. Rosenberg has been identified as the pilot in a different crash in March 2010, but the FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board are still investigating the cause of yesterday's incident.

Have an opinion on this story? Share it!

Sources

Ben Nuckols and Amanda Lee Myers. "Durham CEO among 6 dead after plane crashes into Md. home" — WRAL, December 9, 2014
"BREAKING NEWS: 6 confirmed dead as plane crashes into Gaithersburg house" — WJLA-TV, December 8, 2014
Dana Hedgpeth and Dan Morse. "Six killed when plane crashes into house in Gaithersburg" — Washington Post, December 8, 2014
John Clarke. "Executive plane crashes into Maryland house, kills six" — Reuters, December 8, 2014

Share this:

This page is archived, and is no longer publicly editable.

Articles presented on Wikinews reflect the specific time at which they were written and published, and do not attempt to encompass events or knowledge which occur or become known after their publication.

Got a correction? Add the template {{editprotected}} to the talk page along with your corrections, and it will be brought to the attention of the administrators.

Please note that due to our archival policy, we will not alter or update the content of articles that are archived, but will only accept requests to make grammatical and formatting corrections.

Note that some listed sources or external links may no longer be available online due to age.

The text of this article is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License