February 16, 2010 - Five Dead in NJ Small Plane Crash

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Five people were killed Monday in the crash of a small plane at a private airport in New Jersey, authorities said.

The plane -- a twin-engine Cessna 337 registered to Jack Air LLC of Wilmington, Del. -- crashed at about 3:45 p.m. EST, The New York Times reported. Witnesses said they saw a piece of the plane fly off before the plane went down and appeared to disintegrate as it hit a runway at Monmouth Executive Airport in Wall Township, N.J., about 60 miles south of New York.

All five people on board -- three men, an adolescent male and a younger male -- were killed. Their names were not immediately disclosed.

Officials said three of the victims were related to one another and two were from New Jersey. Relatives of the victims were at the airport when the plane crashed, the newspaper said.

Capt. Timothy Clayton of the Wall Township Police Department said the plane had taken off from Executive Airport.

A witness, Barry Kennedy, 52, of Neptune, N.J., said the plane appeared to be speeding just above the trees before it went down.

"It was like it was doing a flyby, like in the movie 'Top Gun,'" Kennedy said. "The engines were full-blast."

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