Coast Guard suspends search after remains of 8 passengers on plane that crashed off North Carolina coast are recovered
The Coast Guard announced Tuesday night that it has suspended its search for the passengers who were on board a small plane that crashed off the coast of North Carolina over the weekend. The remains of all eight passengers have been recovered and there is no indication that anyone survived the crash, the Carteret County Sheriff's Office said in a statement on Wednesday.
Medical examiners have examined the remains of all eight victims, and they are in the process of being transferred to East Carolina University Brody School of Medicine in Greenville, North Carolina, to be examined further, the sheriff's office said. Two of the passengers' remains have been positively identified, and they will be turned over to their families. Officials did not release their identities.
Earlier Tuesday, authorities said four teenagers and four adults returning from a hunting trip were on board the plane. They were all from North Carolina, and most lived in Carteret, a coastal county of nearly 70,000 people that includes the southern edge of the Outer Banks. Carteret County includes communities such as Emerald Isle and Atlantic Beach as well as the Cape Lookout National Seashore and its iconic Outer Banks lighthouse, which has a black-and-white diamond pattern.
The sheriff's office confirmed the members of the group as Ernest Durwood Rawls, 67 and the pilot; Jeffrey Worthington Rawls, 28; Stephanie Ann McInnis Fulcher, 42; Jonathan Kole McInnis, 15; Douglas Hunter Parks, 45; Noah Lee Styron, 15; Michael Daily Shepard, 15; and Jacob Nolan Taylor, 16.
"We are incredibly saddened and join with the Down East and Eastern North Carolina community as we await official word on the airplane crash," Carteret County Public Schools said in a statement early Monday afternoon. "Crisis teams are on school campuses to support students, staff and families."
The Coast Guard said in a news release that it received a report of a possible downed aircraft on Sunday about 4 miles east of Drum Inlet from a Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point air traffic controller. The air traffic controller reported that the aircraft was behaving erratically on radar, then disappeared from the screen.
The single-engine Pilatus PC-12/47 crashed into the water approximately 18 miles northeast of Michael J. Smith Field in Beaufort, North Carolina, about 2 p.m. Sunday, according to an email from the Federal Aviation Administration. A preliminary accident notification on the FAA's website noted that the aircraft "crashed into water under unknown circumstances."
FlightAware listed a departure for that plane from Hyde County Airport at 1:35 p.m. Sunday and noted it was last seen near Beaufort at 2:01 p.m.
The Coast Guard said authorities searched more than 2,000 square miles over 48 hours, with crews collecting various aircraft materials including the plane's flight data recorder, which will be turned over to the National Transportation Safety Board, the sheriff's office said.
