OWATONNA, Minn. — A small jet crashed in strong thunderstorms Thursday while preparing to land at a regional airport in Minnesota, killing at least eight people, including several casino and construction executives.
Sheriff Gary Ringhofer said there were at most nine people aboard the Raytheon Hawker 800, which went down 60 miles south of the Twin Cities. He said investigators were looking into whether there was a passenger who is unaccounted for. Seven people were dead at the scene. One died later at a hospital.
The charter jet, flying from from Atlantic City, N.J., to Owatonna, a town of 25,000, went down in a cornfield northwest of Degner Regional Airport, scattering debris, Ringhofer said. The wreckage was not visible to reporters because tall corn obscured the crash site.
Atlantic City Mayor Scott Evans said those on board included two high-ranking executives from Revel Entertainment, which is building a $2 billion hotel-casino project in Atlantic City, and several employees of Tishman Construction, which is working on the project. He didn’t know their identities but said Revel chief executive Kevin DeSanctis was not on board.
Bud Perrone, a spokesman for Tishman, identified one of the victims as Karen Sandland, a project manager on the Revel project who worked out of Tishman’s Newark, N.J., office. Lauren Avellino Turton, a spokeswoman for Revel, confirmed that several company employees were killed in the crash, although she didn’t identify them or say how many were on board.
Cameron Smith, a mechanic at the airport, said he spoke by radio with the jet’s pilot just minutes before the crash. The pilot was about to land and was asking where he should park for fuel, Smith said.
He ran to the crash scene to see if anyone could be helped but saw only a long skid path and debris that he described as “shredded.”
“There was no fuselage,” he said. “There were just parts.”
An hour before the accident, a 72 mph wind gust was reported in Owatonna, according to the National Weather Service, but Smith said the crash happened after the worst of the storm had passed, with the sky clearing and only light rain.
Don Pyatt, president of a local glass manufacturer, Viracon, confirmed that the passengers were customers from “a couple of different companies” who were coming to the plant to discuss a project in Las Vegas.
