6 people dead after jet crashes into Maryland home

Correction: Devin Gemmell was a one-month-old boy killed along with an older brother and their mother when a small private jet crashed into their home in Montgomery County, Md. An Associated Press article that appeared in some editions on Dec. 9 misspelled Devin’s first name.

GAITHERSBURG, Md. -- A small, private jet crashed into a house in Maryland's Montgomery County on Monday, killing a woman and her young sons inside the home and three people on the aircraft, authorities said.

The jet slammed into the home just before lunchtime in Gaithersburg, a suburb of Washington, D.C., Montgomery County Fire and Rescue Chief Steve Lohr said during a news conference.

Authorities quickly said all three people in the plane had been killed, but it took hours for fire crews to sweep the home and confirm that three people were inside. They were identified as 36-year-old Marie Gemmell and her two sons, 3-year-old Cole and 1-month-old Devon, police said.

They were found in a second-floor bathroom. Gemmell was lying on top of her young sons in an apparent effort to shield them from the smoke and fire, said police Capt. Paul Starks. Her husband and a school-age daughter were not home and were accounted for, police said.

The fuselage of the jet crashed into the front lawn of an adjacent home, which was heavily damaged by fire, and investigators believe one of its wings, which had fuel inside, was sheared off and tore through the front of the Gemmell home, said Robert Sumwalt, a National Transportation Safety Board member. Witnesses reported seeing and hearing a secondary explosion after the plane hit the ground.

The two-story, wood-frame home was gutted by the impact of the crash and ensuing blaze. No one was injured in the adjacent homes that also had major damage.

The founder and CEO of a North Carolina clinical research organization was among those on the plane. Health Decisions of Durham, N.C., said in a news release that Dr. Michael Rosenberg was among those killed.

Rosenberg was a pilot who crashed a different plane in Gaithersburg on March 1, 2010, according to a government official who wasn't authorized to speak publicly and asked not to be named.

Fred Pedreira, 67, said he had just returned home from the grocery store and was parking his car when he saw the jet.

"This guy, when I saw him, for a fast jet with the wheels down, I said, 'I think he's coming in too low,'" Pedreira said. "Then he was 90 degrees -- sideways -- and then he went belly-up into the house and it was a ball of fire. It was terrible."

An FAA spokesman said preliminary information showed the Embraer EMB-500/Phenom 100 twin-engine jet was on approach at the nearby Montgomery County Airpark. The National Transportation Safety Board sent a team to investigate.

An investigator at the scene said the safety agency would look into everything involving what could have led to the crash.

Information for this article was contributed by Joan Lowy of The Associated Press.

A Section on 12/09/2014

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