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.
Karthik Balasubramanian, 44, who was vacationing in Japan with family, lost his wife Lin, 41, and their daughter Aahana in the fatal accident that occured on January 10. He returned to Singapore on Wednesday along with his three year-old daughter who survived the crash.
Indian-origin British Sikh Army officer Preet Chandi, who made history by trekking to the South Pole, has broken the world record for the longest, solo, unsupported, and unassisted polar expedition by any woman in history.
A Federal prosecutor has charged a "prominent" Indian-American of using his standing in the community to rip off others in a real estate scam that promised high rates of returns. Michael Easley, the federal prosecutor for eastern North Carolina, announced on Tuesday that Kumar Arun Neppalli, 56, has been charged with defrauding 12 people.
The court heard that on September 7 last year, Singh smashed a window in De Montfort House, Leicester city centre, with a hockey stick after getting a warning note on his car asking him not to park in the wrong spot.
Five Indians, including the four from Ghazipur and one from Bihar, were on board the Yeti Airlines ATR 72 aircraft which crashed in Pokhara on January 15. The four Ghazipur victims on the ill-fated plane include -- Sonu Jaiswal, 35, Abhishek Kushwaha, 25, Vishal Sharma, 22, and Anil Kumar Rajbhar, 27.
Ardern, who became the youngest female head of government in the world when she was elected Prime Minister in 2017 at the age of 37, said that the six "challenging" years in the job had taken a toll.
