Nine people dead in Learjet crash in south Florida, officials say

“It looked like a missile going down,” Florida Gov. Ron De. Santis said of the crash. There are no reports of anyone on the ground being killed, but it did create a significant debris field, the governor said.

About 600 people are in need of shelter on the ground due to the crash, a county official said. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who confirmed the deaths, called the crash a “horrific tragedy.”The plane was a Learjet 60 flying to the Bahamas from Austin-Bergstrom International Airport,.

It is registered to an LLC in Delaware,, and is listed as available for charter online. The FAA and NTSB will investigate the crash, the FAA said. NTSB investigators will arrive at the site Sunday and Monday.

A news conference is also planned for Monday. The crash occurred near Military Trail, between Cresthaven Boulevard and 10th Avenue North, the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement.

Minutes before the crash, the pilot of the plane reported ice accumulating on the aircraft, an outside air temperature of -47 degrees Celsius, and moderate turbulence, bouncing the plane by up to 700 feet, traffic control radio calls captured by LiveATC.net.

“We have light, clear ice that is manageable and moderate turbulence,” the pilot radioed the Miami Air Route Traffic Control Center. But moments later, after reporting precipitation started to fall and requesting to climb, they declared an emergency.

“We’re descending 8,000 – mayday, mayday - we’re descending 10,000 feet per minute,” the pilot said. “We are in an overspeed condition descending 20,000 feet per minute … We’re going to crash into the ground.”The jet descended 27,000 feet over the course of one minute, just before flight tracking data cut off, the website ADS-B Exchange shows.

The road is buckled where the plane slammed into it, creating a crater, video from CNN affiliate WPBF showed. About 600 people are in need shelter after the plane crash because of the damage on the ground, said Joel Flores, Palm Beach County commissioner for District 3, who was the first county official at the scene.

The residents are being sent to two shelters in the county while the site is being investigated, he said. “I heard and felt the boom,” Andrew Mannino.

“The power immediately went out and is still out.”He said he smelled the smoke and “saw a large black cloud immerse in the air.”The crash site is about four miles south of the airport in West Palm Beach, which was renamed for President Donald Trump earlier this year.

Trump was in West Palm Beach earlier Sunday, but departed the airport on Air Force One a little more than one hour before this crash. Dash cam video showing the crash is going to be important to investigators piecing together what happened, said Mary Schiavo, CNN aviation analyst and former inspector general for the Transportation Department.

The airport is a good place to wait out the bad weather, Schiavo ’s Fredricka Whitfield Sunday. “That is not a controlled descent. That is a descent where literally you’re exceeding that the speed of the plane on descent.

You’re exceeding the descent rate. So at that point, it’s clear whatever happened, they had lost control of the plane.”The steep descent could have taken parts off the plane, and the flight recorder could have been destroyed in the explosion, Schiavo added.

There were scattered storms in the area at the time of the crash, and the plane passed through a stronger storm cell a few minutes before it began descending. It is unclear if the storm contributed to the crash.

All northbound and southbound lanes of Military Trail are closed until further notice, officials said, and motorists are advised to avoid the area and seek alternate routes.