Three people were killed on Sunday when a light aircraft crashed in a wooded area of Maryland, less than 30 kilometers east of Washington, D.C. There were no survivors. The crash happened around midnight local time between Saturday and Sunday in Bowie, Maryland.
According to preliminary aviation investigators, the plane had taken off from Ocean City, New Jersey, and was headed to Montgomery County, Maryland, when it went down for reasons that remain unclear. Local authorities said the pilot and two passengers were the only people on board.
Emergency crews were dispatched after receiving an automatic distress alert from one passenger’s device, described as an iPhone crash notification. Firefighters, rescue teams, and police searched in the dark for nearly four hours before finding the wreckage. The debris field stretched about 30 meters, and the crash site was close to a residential neighborhood and a local playground.
The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board has opened a formal investigation into the crash, working with Maryland law enforcement to determine what caused the accident.