‘Very important' evidence found miles from Learjet crash site in Florida, investigator says

A piece of the Learjet that slammed into the ground in Florida, killing all nine people aboard, was found nearly 4 miles from the crash site, investigators said Tuesday, confirming that the plane was breaking apart before impact. National Transportation Safety Board member Tom Chapman said most of the left elevator — part of the tail that controls the plane's pitch — was found in three pieces between 1.3 miles (2 kilometers) and 3.8 miles (6.1 kilometers) from Greenacres, near West Palm Beach, where the jet went down Sunday afternoon. 'What that means exactly, in terms of what caused the aircraft to lose control, or whether the loss of this piece was a result of the forces on the aircraft, we don't know yet,' Chapman said at a news conference. Without the elevator intact, the pilot would not have been able to pull the Learjet out of its nosedive, Chapman said. 'At those speeds I don't know that it would've been effective even if it had still been attached to the aircraft, but knowing that it was lost is a very important piece of evidence in terms of pointing us toward other things to investigate,' Chapman said. Weather will be a key initial focus of the investigation, Chapman reiterated Tuesday. The nosedive started after the co-pilot reported ice starting to build up on the plane and some significant turbulence as the Learjet flew into a rapidly developing thunderstorm cell. The pieces that broke off the plane were probably a byproduct of the nosedive, not the cause, aviation safety expert Jeff Guzzetti told The Associated Press. Their discovery within a few miles of the crash site suggests the elevator components fell off closer to the ground, he said. 'If those parts would have broken off at altitude, those pieces would be a lot farther away,' Guzzetti said. Freeze frames from videos appear to show the entire horizontal stabilizer missing from the top of the tail before impact. Former NTSB member John Goglia said flight tracking data appears to show the plane leveling off briefly for about 8 seconds around 8,000 feet (2,438 meters) before nosediving into the ground. Goglia believes that key tail pieces were likely torn off the plane when the captain pulled up sharply. 'He apparently leveled off for brief moments at 8,000 feet and to accomplish that he likely overstressed the tail and the horizontal stabilizer separated from the airplane,' Goglia said. Victims include a family, a nanny and a longtime aviator The Learjet 60 took off from Austin, Texas, and was headed for the Bahamas. The victims included technology entrepreneur Adam Robinson; his wife, Helen Sharp; and their two young children, relatives said. The family's nanny, Ana María Ramírez Cetina, was also killed. The government in Ramírez's native Colombia said it was providing assistance to her family. Her sister, Angie Alejandra Ramírez, told Blu Radio, a radio station in Bogotá, Colombia, that she spoke to her minutes before she boarded the plane. 'I sent her a photo of my baby and a video and she told me she would watch the video as soon as they landed but I didn't get a response from her,' she said in Spanish. She said her sister was a biomedical engineer but had moved to the United States to look for better work opportunities and to be closer to their mom. She became the family's nanny in January. 'She loved the Robinson family very much, and they also loved her as part of the family. Ana María loved Charlie, she loved Emma, and she would spend all her time with the kids, and even with their little dog, Bonnie,' she said. Colombian President Abelardo de la Espriella posted about her death on X, writing in Spanish: 'Her premature departure fills us with sadness.' The plane's captain, Jeff Gregory, 55, lived in the Philadelphia suburbs. He was a longtime aviator, husband, father and devout Christian. As the plane plunged, a man's voice could be heard reciting the Lord's Prayer in the background of the co-pilot's final radio transmissions to air traffic control. Friends are convinced it was Gregory. Thomas Noetzel, the director of operations at the company that operated the flight, Upper Jets, organized an online fundraiser to support Gregory's wife and children. Gregory was a close personal friend and 'knowing him has made me a better person,' Noetzel wrote on the fundraising website GoFundMe. Gregory, one of his children and his daughter-in-law were graduates of Bob Jones University, a small Christian school in South Carolina, according to its alumni Facebook page. Co-pilot radioed and texted about ice and turbulence The Learjet hit the ground with enough force to create a crater before bursting into flames. About 600 nearby residents remain displaced, but only one person on the ground was reported injured. Investigators have been scouring the area for wreckage, collecting dashcam video and speaking to witnesses. After days of heavy rain, they plan to access the crater on Wednesday and expect to find critical components of the plane. Co-pilot Nathalia Gadelha Filgueiras' stepfather, Thiago Corteleti, told the New York Post that she texted her boyfriend about 10 minutes before the crash, telling him: 'I've got turbulence, I've got ice.' Several experts said that pilots should not be texting while they are flying, even if federal rules don't strictly prohibit it when a charter jet like this is cruising along at altitude. Cell phone use is banned throughout commercial airline flights and during the critical moments around takeoffs and landings of charter flights. But those texts could provide additional clues to investigators. In the last two minutes of the flight, Filgueiras shifted from calmly communicating with air traffic controllers to calling out terrifying updates as the plane plummeted. She told them ice was accumulating on the plane and that turbulence had thrown it up and down by more than 700 feet (210 meters). 'We're going to crash into the ground,' she said, as the jet descended at a rate of more than 20,000 feet (6,100 meters) per minute. And then, before the transmission cuts off: 'We're out of time!' A preliminary NTSB report will be released in about a month, but it will likely take more than a year to determine the probable cause of the crash.