WESTON, Mass. — Federal investigators are outlining the final moments of an Upstate New York plane crash that killed a family from Weston.
Among the victims were Karenna Groff, a former MIT soccer player named the 2022 NCAA woman of the year; her father, a neuroscientist, Dr. Michael Groff; her mother, Dr. Joy Saini, a urogynecologist; her brother, Jared Groff, a 2022 graduate of Swarthmore College who worked as a paralegal; James Santoro, Karennas boyfriend and another recent MIT graduate and Alexia Couyutas Duarte, Jared Groff’s partner.
Kareena and Jared were both graduates of Weston High School.
The National Transportation Safety Board, in a preliminary report issued Friday, said the private plane departed Westchester County Airport in White Plains, New York, at around 11:30 a.m. heading north to Columbia County Airport in Hudson.
Around 11:57 a.m., Michael Groff, the pilot informed air traffic control that he’d missed the initial approach to the runway at Columbia County Airport, according to the report. The controller then gave him new instructions for the landing, which Groff acknowledged a little after 12 p.m.
About a minute later, the controller warned Groff the plane was flying at a low altitude, the report states. The pilot never responded, and, despite multiple warnings, air traffic control received no further radio transmissions from the plane until radar contact was eventually lost.
The Mitsubishi MU-2B-40 crashed in snow-covered terrain roughly 10 miles south of the airport.
Investigators didn’t provide an exact cause of the crash in the preliminary report.
‘Unimaginable and sudden loss’: Weston High School mourns family killed in New York plane crash
But they noted that all major components of the aircraft found within a 150-foot debris field and that no significant weather advisories were in effect in the region at the time of the crash.
John Santoro, James’ father, tells Boston 25 his son first met Groff as a freshman at MIT. Groff, was an All-American soccer player studying biomedical engineering at MIT and was named the 2022 NCAA Woman of the Year.
“Still couldn’t believe it was true. I still don’t believe it’s true,” John Santoro said.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates as more information becomes available.
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