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.
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2 Sikh men were attacked and robbed in New York in Queens on Tuesday, the same neighbourhood in the city where an elderly Sikh man was the target of a hate crime less than 2 weeks ago. The attack happened “very close” to the area where Nirmal Singh was punched in an unprovoked assault on April 3.
Officials from the city and the federal government investigating the morning shooting which seemed to be meticulously planned were puzzled by what triggered the attack. Although 33 shots had been fired, no one has died while five of those hit by bullets were reported to be in a critical condition.
A total of 16 people were injured in the incident, six of them from shrapnel, smoke inhalation or other causes, officials said. 5 of the gunshot victims were in critical condition, but miraculously there were no deaths reported.
The shooting occurred at 4.13 p.m. on Sunday evening in the US city's 12200 block of Blakley Avenue, Xinhua news agency quoted the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department as saying in a notification. Two male adult victims were pronounced dead at the scene, the Department said.
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