The seven passengers killed in Sunday’s Florida jet crash have been identified as Austin tech founder Adam Robinson, his wife Helen Sharp, their two young children, their nanny and two close friends.
In a joint statement shared on Facebook Monday, the families named the victims as Adam Robinson and Helen Sharp, their children Emma and Charlie, family friends Rachael Reed and Charmi Fehr, and Anita Maria Apellido Cetina, the nanny who cared for the children. The families described Reed and Fehr as “full of joy and adventure” and remembered Apellido Cetina for the tenderness and devotion she showed Emma and Charlie.
Helen’s father, Dudley Sharp, 70, told The Palm Beach Post that his daughter was 40 and her husband was 45. He said the family lost his daughter, his son-in-law and both of his grandchildren on the plane. “It’s quite a blow,” he said.
Robinson spent a decade working on Wall Street before founding GetEmail, an artificial intelligence startup, and was a graduate of Rice University in Houston. Sharp was a potter and ran her own business.
The family was flying from Austin, Texas, to the Bahamas aboard a Learjet 60 when the plane went down around 12:50 p.m. Sunday in Greenacres, a community in Palm Beach County about seven miles southwest of West Palm Beach. The jet nosedived into a busy stretch of Military Trail near a mobile home neighborhood and erupted into a massive fireball. All nine people on board died. One person on the ground suffered a leg injury.
The two pilots were also killed. The co-pilot was 20-year-old Nathalia Gadelha Filgueiras, who earned her pilot’s license at 17 and had logged more than 1,300 hours of flight time, according to her family. The captain has been identified as 55-year-old Jeff Gregory, according to TMZ and CBS News. Authorities have not formally released the names of the victims.
Air traffic control audio from the Florida jet crash captured the crew’s final moments. The pilot reported managing ice in moderate turbulence before declaring a mayday as the jet began dropping 10,000 feet per minute, then 20,000 feet per minute. Seconds later, the pilot said, “We’re going to crash into the ground.”
Made to order and shipped to your door.
The National Transportation Safety Board confirmed that ice was forming on the aircraft during moderate turbulence and that the crew had asked to climb from 35,000 to 37,000 feet shortly before declaring an emergency. Investigators have not determined what caused the crash. The NTSB typically releases a preliminary report within about 30 days, while a final report can take a year or longer.
