An urgent search is underway for a Florida couple and their two grandchildren after their small plane went down Monday while returning from a family getaway in the Bahamas.
The Royal Bahamas Police Force said authorities were alerted around 2:20 p.m. Monday that a five-seat PA-34 Piper aircraft bound for Opa-locka, Florida, had crashed into the ocean about 13 miles west of Andros Island.
The private plane had taken off earlier that day from Great Harbor Cay with 80-year-old pilot Mario Lamar, his 79-year-old wife, Lili Lamar, and their grandchildren, Sofia Sosa, 28, and Christian Sosa, 22, relatives told the Miami Herald.
Family members said the Miami grandparents and their grandchildren had spent Labor Day weekend together at the Lamars’ Great Harbor Cay home, taking in the sunset before the trip ended in tragedy.
“They’ve spent their whole life going there. That’s like their second home,” Silvia Larrieu, a niece of Mario and Lili, told the outlet. “They were coming home.”
FlightAware data showed the aircraft disappeared from radar after its speed began shifting sharply and its altitude fell abruptly, dropping from 10,000 feet to 3,700 feet in roughly three minutes.
Larrieu said the plane encountered severe weather near the northern tip of Andros Island, conditions that initially kept Bahamian forces from launching an immediate search for the wreckage.
“Please help,” she said in a video message, pleading for assistance. “I ask anybody out there, if you can help with search and rescue efforts, we would greatly appreciate it. We need to bring them home.”
The US Coast Guard is assisting authorities in the Bahamas with the search for the downed aircraft with an HC-144 Ocean Sentry airplane, the agency said in a statement on social media.
Mario Lamar, the pilot, was well-trained and has “more than 40 years of flying experience,” his family told ABC News in a statement.
Sofia Sosa is a recent graduate of Wake Forest University. Her brother, Christian Sosa, also just graduated from Loyola Marymount University, the outlet reported.
