The victims of a plane crash in upstate New York have been identified as a former NCAA Woman of the Year and members of her family.
Karenna Groff, a former MIT soccer player who was named NCAA Woman of the Year in 2022, died alongside her mother Dr. Joy Saini, father Dr. Michael Groff, partner James Santoro, brother Jared Groff, and her brother’s partner Alexia Couyutas Duarte, the Associated Press reported.
The group was traveling in a private plane to the Catskills on Saturday for a birthday celebration and to mark the Passover holiday when the twin-engine Mitsubishi MU-2B went down in a field in nearby Copake, killing everyone onboard, according to the AP.
The air traffic control tower at the Columbia County Airport said the pilot missed the initial approach to the runway and radioed to organize a second attempt. But the tower then lost contact with the plane while preparing to radio new coordinates to the pilot.
Officials said air traffic controllers radioed a low altitude alert to the Mitsubishi MU-2B three times before the crash, but there was no response and no mayday call.
Video showed the plane was intact as it crashed into the field, AP reported.
Karenna Groff and her partner James Santoro were both recent graduates of MIT, where Groff played soccer and Santoro played lacrosse.
John Santoro, James’s father, told AP: “They were a wonderful family. The world lost a lot of very good people who were going to do a lot of good for the world if they had the opportunity. We’re all personally devastated.”
Jared Groff worked as a paralegal after graduating from Swarthmore College in 2022 alongside his partner Alexia Couyutas Duarte, who was set to start studying at Harvard Law School this fall.
Karenna and Jared’s father Dr. Michael Groff worked as a neuroscientist while their mother Dr. Joy Saini was a urogynecologist.
It comes after a Spanish family of five died when a helicopter plunged into the Hudson River on Thursday last week.
The victims included Agustín Escobar, president of the Spanish division of tech giant Siemens, his wife, Merce Camprubi Montal, and their three children—ages 4, 5, and 11.
The family were on a sightseeing flight over Manhattan to celebrate Montal’s birthday when the helicopter crashed approximately 16 minutes after takeoff.
The 36-year-old pilot, Seankese Johnson, also died in the crash.
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