Karenna Groff, a former MIT soccer player appointed the woman of the year of NCAA 2022, died on Saturday along with six other people, including the members of her family, in a plane crash in the north of the state of New York.
Mitsubishi Mu-2b double motor fell shortly after noon in a muddy field in Copake, New York, near the Massachusetts line, killing everyone on board, according to the authorities and a family member who spoke with Associated Press.
Shortly before the accident, the pilot had a radio air traffic control at the Columbia County Airport to say that he had lost the initial approach and requested a new approach plan, officials of the National Transportation Security Board said in a Sunday Information Session. While preparing the new coordinates, air traffic drivers tried to transmit a low altitude alert three times without response from the pilot and without an anguish call, authorities said.
The researchers obtained a video of the last seconds of the flight, which “seems to show that the plane was intact and crashed at a high rate of descent to the ground,” NTSB's official journalists Todd Inman told the official NTSB journalists.
Among the victims were Groff; his father, Dr. Michael Groff, neuroscientist; His mother, Dr. Joy Saini, a uroginecologist; His brother, Jared Groff, a 2022 graduate from Swarthmore College who worked as a legal assistant; Alexia Couyutas Duarte, a partner of Jared Groff, who also graduated from Swarthmore and planned to attend Harvard's Law Faculty this fall; And Karenna Groff's boyfriend, James Santoro, another MIT's newly graduated, according to a family statement on Sunday.
Santoro's father, John Santoro, told the AP that his son met Karenna Groff as a first -year student studying at MIT. Groff, who grew up in Weston, Massachusetts, was an American football player studied biomedical engineering. Santoro, a New Jersey mathematics student, played Lacrosse for school.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, Groff co-founded OpenPPE, helping to create a new masks design for essential workers. In 2023, he received the prestigious Women's Prize of the Year of the NCAA for the previous year for his achievements in the field.
“Actually, this recognition is a testimony of my MIT Women's Soccer Family and all the guidance, support and friendship that they have provided for me over the years,” he said in an interview at that time.
After graduating, Santoro and Groff moved to Manhattan, where Groff enrolled in the School of Medicine at the University of New York and Santoro worked as an investment associate for Silver Point, a coverage fund with headquarters in Greenwich, Connecticut.
On Saturday morning, the family went to Westchester County Airport in White Plains, a suburb of New York City, where they boarded Michael Groff's private plane. They were prepared to land at the Columbia County Airport, but approximately 10 miles crashed to the south. The plane was “compressed, fastened and embedded in the field” of a muddy agricultural field, said Inman.
The pilot flew under the instrument flight rules, instead of the visual flight rules, but it was too early to determine if the reduced visibility of climatic conditions was a factor, he said.
The plane had sold a year ago and had an improved cabin with newer technology that was certified to the standards of the Federal Aviation Administration, according to the NTSB.
Researchers hope to be at the scene of the accident for approximately a week, and a complete accident report could take 12 to 24 months to complete, said Inman.
Associated Press contributed to this report.
