Mayor says 5 injured in fatal Philadelphia plane crash remain hospitalized, 3 in critical condition

PHILADELPHIA — (AP) — Three people injured on the ground when a jet crashed in a busy Philadelphia neighborhood, killing seven people, remain in critical condition, Mayor Cherelle Parker said Sunday.

Parker said 22 people were injured and five of them remain hospitalized. At least 11 homes were significantly damaged, along with some businesses.

“Our city continues to mourn their loss and they are in our thoughts and prayers,” Parker said of the deceased.

A Mexico-bound air ambulance plunged to the ground Friday evening, less than a minute after takeoff from Northeast Philadelphia Airport with six people on board, including a girl who had spent months being treated at a city hospital.

One of the dead was killed inside a car as debris from the Learjet 55 crash exploded into the neighborhood, damaging nearby homes.

The investigation into the crash remained ongoing, Parker said, adding that officials were going door to door to seek information from neighborhood residents.

The National Transportation Safety Board said Sunday that investigators recovered the jet's cockpit voice recorder at the impact site at a depth of about 8 feet (2.4 meters). Also recovered was the aircraft's ground proximity warning system, which could also contain flight data, the agency said on social media.

The crash came just two days after the deadliest U.S. air disaster in a generation, when an American Airlines jet carrying 60 passengers and four crew members collided in midair in Washington, D.C., with an Army helicopter carrying three soldiers. There were no survivors.

A busy thoroughfare near the Philadelphia crash site remained closed Sunday, but police said Roosevelt Boulevard would reopen by rush hour Monday morning.

The neighborhood known as Castor Gardens is a working-class area of dense row homes, said state Rep. Jared Solomon, who grew up there. It's a busy commercial and residential area crisscrossed by heavy traffic.

“These are just people who want to help others,” Solomon said Sunday. “They're nurses, they're construction workers, they are first responders. In a community that is always poised to help others in and around our city; now we sort of are able to turn inward and all unite together.”

The plane, bound for Tijuana with a scheduled stop in Missouri, had reached about 1,500 feet (457 meters) before it plummeted to the ground. National Transportation Safety Board chair Jennifer Homendy called it a “high-impact crash” that left the plane “highly fragmented.” She said NTSB staff would be working to collect debris from the wreckage, a process that could take weeks.

The child had recently completed treatment at Shriners Children’s Philadelphia hospital for a condition not easily treated in Mexico, hospital officials said. Her mother and four crew members also died. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said all six victims on the plane were from her country.

Philadelphia officials and plane owner Jet Rescue Air Ambulance have not disclosed the identities of the dead, but XE Médica Ambulancias, a Mexican emergency service, identified one of the victims as Dr. Raúl Meza of the State of Mexico near Mexico City, the air ambulance company's chief of neonatology. Relatives of Josué Juárez of Veracruz said he was the aircraft’s co-pilot.

Parker said names of all of the deceased victims from Mexico will not be made public until Mexican consulate officials deem it appropriate.

But in Mexico, the Ensenada municipal government confirmed that two of the victims were from that coastal city in Baja California state and identified them as Valentina Guzmán Murillo and her mother, Lizeth Murillo Osuna.

Jet Rescue Air Ambulance, which operated the Mexico-registered airplane that crashed in Philadelphia, is based in Mexico and also has operations in Miami. In 2023 five crew members working for Jet Rescue were killed when their plane overran a runway in the central Mexican state of Morelos and crashed into a hillside.

Audio recorded by LiveATC captured an air traffic controller at Northeast Philadelphia Airport telling “Medevac Medservice 056” to turn right when departing. About 30 seconds later, the controller repeats the request before asking, “You on frequency?” Minutes later the controller says, “We have a lost aircraft. We’re not exactly sure what happened, so we’re trying to figure it out. For now the field is going to be closed.”