A small turboprop conducting a hurricane relief mission to Jamaica plunged into a retention pond in a gated Coral Springs neighborhood Monday, killing two people shortly after takeoff and narrowly missing nearby homes, authorities and a resident said.
Coral Springs police confirmed the fatalities but released no information about the victims. Mike Moser, deputy chief of the Coral Springs-Parkland fire department, said emergency crews arrived within minutes of the call. Initial search-and-rescue efforts found no survivors and were later converted to recovery operations. Crews located debris near the pond, and aerial TV footage showed a broken fence in the backyard of a home that borders the water.
“There was no actual plane to be seen,” Moser said, noting divers followed a debris trail into the pond but did not locate victims during rescue attempts.
Resident Kenneth DeTrolio told the South Florida Sun Sentinel the aircraft tore through his yard, destroying a fence and toppling palm trees before hitting the water. He said wreckage was strewn across his property and that spilled fuel contaminated his pool and back porch, leaving the smell of jet fuel inside his house for hours.
Officials warned neighbors to expect a heavy police presence while investigators collected evidence at the scene.
The aircraft, a Beechcraft King Air, departed Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport at about 10:14 a.m., a city spokesperson said. Coral Springs police and firefighters were on scene by about 10:19 a.m., roughly five minutes after takeoff. Federal Aviation Administration records show the plane was built in 1976; King Air models typically carry seven to twelve passengers, according to the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association.
Federal records list the registered owner as International Air Services, a company that offers trust agreements allowing non-U.S. citizens to register planes with the FAA. A company representative who answered the phone declined to comment.
Flight-tracking data indicate the aircraft had made multiple trips to and from Jamaica and the Cayman Islands in the previous week, including flights between George Town and the Jamaican towns of Montego Bay and Negril, before arriving in Fort Lauderdale on Friday. It was not immediately clear who organized the missions.
Broward County, where the flight originated and crashed, is home to a large Caribbean American population that had been organizing relief shipments after Hurricane Melissa. The powerful storm made landfall in Jamaica on Oct. 28 as a Category 5 hurricane — tied for the strongest Atlantic hurricane landfall on record — and caused extensive damage. Melissa also battered Cuba, Haiti and the Dominican Republic and prompted international relief efforts. Jamaican officials reported roofs torn off about 120,000 structures and roughly 90,000 families affected in the hardest-hit western areas; more than 2,000 people remained in shelters a week after the storm.
Moser said local police will continue recovery operations while federal aviation authorities investigate the cause of the crash.
