A desperate search for a Florida couple and their grandchildren is underway after their plane crashed Monday on the way home from a Bahamas vacation.
Bahamian authorities received a report that a five-seater PA-34 Piper aircraft en route to Opa-locka, Florida, had plummeted into the water 13 miles west of Andros Island at 2:20 p.m. on Monday, according to the Royal Bahamas Police Force.
The small private plane, which departed from Great Harbor Cay that morning, was carrying pilot Mario Lamar, 80, his wife Lili Lamar, 79, and two of their grandchildren, 28-year-old Sofia Sosa and 22-year-old Christian Sosa, their heartbroken family told the Miami Herald.
The Miami couple and their grandkids spent Labor Day weekend watching the sunset at their home in Great Harbor Cay before tragedy struck.
“They’ve spent their whole life going there. That’s like their second home,” Silvia Larrieu, a niece of Mario and Lili, told the outlet. “They were coming home.”
The aircraft went off the radar after its speed rapidly fluctuated and its altitude suddenly dropped from 10,000 feet to 3,700 feet in just three minutes, according to FlightAware data.
The flight passed through rough weather near the north end of Andros Island, which prevented Bahamian Forces from immediately searching for the wreckage, Larrieu said.
“Please help,” she added in a video statement. “I ask anybody out there, if you can help with search and rescue efforts, we would greatly appreciate it. We need to bring them home.”
The US Coast Guard is assisting authorities in the Bahamas with the search for the downed aircraft with an HC-144 Ocean Sentry airplane, the agency said in a statement on social media.
Mario Lamar, the pilot, was well-trained and has “more than 40 years of flying experience,” his family told ABC News in a statement.
Sofia Sosa is a recent graduate of Wake Forest University. Her brother, Christian Sosa, also just graduated from Loyola Marymount University, the outlet reported.
