Indian-origin woman killed, daughter hurt in small plane crash in US
Darpan News Desk IANS, 07 Mar, 2023 05:28 PM
New York, March 7 (IANS) An Indian-origin woman has died in a small plane crash in the New York area while her daughter and the pilot were injured when they were on a "demonstration flight" to explore flying lessons, according to media reports.
Roma Gupta, 63, was killed on Sunday on Long Island when the plane, a four-seater single-engine Piper Cherokee, went down in flames as it was returning to the Republic Airport on Long Island from where it had also taken off.
Her daughter Reeva Gupta, 33, and the pilot are in hospital with severe burns, according to NBC New York TV channel.
"It was a demonstration flight, an introductory flight to see if people are interested" in flying lessons, Oleh Dekajlo, the lawyer for Danny Waizman Flight School, told the channel.
The crash in a residential area of Lindenhurst that missed houses and crashed in a field was captured on home surveillance cameras.
A witness told CBS New York TV, "The pilot did a great job, in my opinion, trying to avoid any houses, people and traffic."
Reeva Gupta is a neurosurgery physician's assistant with the Mount Sinai Hospital System, according to an appeal set up by co-workers on Gofundme.
"To help fulfil a long-standing wish of theirs, they booked a flight lesson", according to the appeal which had collected nearly $70,000 by Tuesday evening to help Reeva Gupta and her family".
It said that she is "fighting for her life" with third-degree burns all over her body.
WABC TV reported that the 23-year-old pilot is a certified flight instructor who issued a "May Day" call - the aviation distress signal - that there was smoke in the plane before it went down.
Within 10 days of the accident, Sharma has undergone four brain surgeries and is in the intensive care unit, hooked up to IVs and life support systems. Back home in India, Sharma's parents are anxiously waiting for their US visa to be approved.
Close on the heels of dairy worker Jayesh Patel's fatal stabbing in Auckland last week, an Indian-origin store owner was targeted in New Zealand, and his staff was attacked by four young men.
At least five people were killed and 25 others injured when a gunman, currently in police custody, opened fire inside a gay nightclub in the US state of Colorado, authorities said. The first officer arrived at midnight and the suspect, identified as Anderson Lee Aldrich, 22, was detained two minutes later.
Shankar Suppiah, 45, who admitted to five counts of cheating, was the sole proprietor of All Resource Network (ARN), which has specialised in event management and the sale of sporting and recreational goods since 2017. At the time of the offences, ARN was a supplier of the FAS, which is Singapore's governing body for football and is responsible for advancing the sport here and managing the national team.
Shreyas Hallur, Atharv Gupta, Veer Sangha, Amisha Kambath, and Jupneet Singh are among 32 scholars who will begin their graduate studies at Oxford in October next year. The Rhodes Scholarship is a fully funded, full time graduate fellowship awarded by the University of Oxford since 1903.
Singh, 59, a private hire driver working for ABC Cars, was pronounced dead in Nine Elms Lane, Wolverhampton, on October 30 after he was discovered with serious injuries. Tomasz Margol, 35, of Bamford Road was charged with Singh's murder, and produced before the Wolverhampton Crown Court earlier this month.
