Investigators are still trying to determine why a small business jet crashed into an apartment building in northeast Ohio Tuesday afternoon.
A mass-fatality team will begin working Wednesday morning to recover the bodies of victims and sift through the wreckage.
The owner of the 10-seat Hawker H25 jet has said the jet was carrying nine people. Authorities say no one aboard the plane survived, but have not confirmed the number of people on the plane. A Florida real estate company says seven of its associates were among the nine people believed killed when a small jet crashed into an apartment building in northeast Ohio.
Pebb Enterprises in Boca Raton said in a statement that two executives and five employees were aboard the 10-seat Hawker H25 jet that crashed and exploded Tuesday afternoon in Akron. Authorities are trying to independently confirm how many people were on board.
The statement said the company is "shocked and deeply saddened for the families, colleagues and friends of those who perished."
Beth Blakeslee of Newark, Ohio, said Ohio State Highway Patrol told her that 50-year-old Diane Smoot was among those who perished when the 10-seat Hawker H25 jet crashed into the building in Akron and exploded Tuesday afternoon.
Cleveland.com reports that another sister, Jeannie Ferrara, said Smoot was with a group of executives from the Boca Raton, Florida-based Pebb Enterprises, a company that scouts locations for shopping malls.
A renowned forensics team from a Pennsylvania college has been summoned to help local officials recover bodies from the site of an Ohio plane crash.
The Summit County coroner on Wednesday sought the expertise of a forensics team from Mercyhurst University in Erie, Pennsylvania. The team specializes in crime scene and airplane crash recoveries of human remains.
Local and federal investigators returned to the site of the crash Wednesday morning. The plane took off from Dayton and planned to land at Akron Fulton International Airport, about 2 miles from the crash site.
No one was inside the four-unit apartment building or another home that caught fire.
Federal, state and local officials have scheduled a news conference for Wednesday afternoon at the crash site.