08/09/2014 10:40
Search called off after Jamaica crash
The U.S. Coast Guard and the Jamaica Defence Force suspended their searches Sunday for signs of a prominent New York couple whose plane crashed in the Caribbean Sea north of Jamaica, CNN reported.
"The Coast Guard suspends a search and rescue case with extremely great care and deliberation," Capt. Todd M. Coggeshall, chief of response management for the Coast Guard, said in a news release.
"After a search area is saturated several times with a maximum number of assets, resources and crew effort, and persons in distress are still not located, a decision is made to suspend a case."
Jamaica suspended its search because of bad weather, said Capt. Basil Jarett of the Jamaica Defence Force.
The Coast Guard said a C-130 aircraft located several small objects in the water.
The crew used smoke flares and two data marker buoys to mark the location for Coast Guard and Jamaican Defense Force boat crews, the Coast Guard said, but none of the searchers could relocate the objects on Saturday.
Jamaica had said one of its military search team spotted the objects.
The single-engine TBM-900 aircraft, owned by estate developer Larry Glazer and his wife, Jane, crashed into the Caribbean hours after the pilot told an air traffic controller that something was wrong as it flew south over the eastern United States.
The plane's radio was silent for hours after the pilot's call, prompting U.S. and Cuban military jets to trail the small private plane. The North American Aerospace Defense Command said those aboard might have suffered from hypoxia, which sets in when oxygen is lacking.
There were conflicting reports on how many people were on the plane, with the U.S. Coast Guard indicating there were three.
But relatives said the couple were the only two people on board and were headed from Rochester, New York, to their vacation home in Naples, Florida.
Those aboard were unresponsive for more than four hours, drifting southward over the U.S. mainland, the Atlantic Ocean and eventually into the Caribbean.