A family trip to the Catskill Mountains to celebrate the Passover holiday and a birthday turned tragic Saturday when the family's private plane crashed in upstate New York, killing all six people aboard. The Mitsubishi MU-2B aircraft went down near the Massachusetts line, in a muddy field in Copake, shortly after noon, killing a close-knit family including Karenna Groff, a former MIT soccer player named 2023's NCAA Woman of the Year, according to sources who spoke to the AP.
Groff's father, the neuroscientist Dr. Michael Groff; her mother, Dr. Joy Saini, a urogynecologist; her boyfriend, James Santoro; and her brother and his girlfriend were reportedly killed in the crash. "They were a wonderful family," said John Santoro, James' father. "The world lost a lot of very good people who were going to do a lot of good for the world if they had the opportunity. We're all personally devastated." Karenna Groff co-founded openPPE during the COVID-19 pandemic, helping to design new masks for essential workers, and was studying medicine at NYU at the time of her death.
The family had taken off from White Plains, NY, intending to land at Columbia County Airport, but they crashed about 20 miles south of their intended destination. It's not yet clear what happened, but authorities say the plane was intact before crashing at a high rate of descent, CBS News reports. Air traffic controllers had attempted to contact the pilot after a low-traffic alert, but there was no response and the plane did not issue any distress calls before crashing. The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating. (This content was created with the help of AI. Read our AI policy.)
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