Plane crash off Caribbean sea kills at least 12 people, including a US citizen.
The fatal crash took place minutes after the mainland-bound Jetstream aircraft took off from the Honduran island of Roatan on Monday night.
The small plane was carrying 14 passengers and three crew members, according to the country’s transport minister, who said the wreckage was found about 0.6 miles off the island’s coast.
A dozen people were killed and five more were rescued after an ‘apparent mechanical failure’ sent the plane spiraling into the sea, CBS reports.
Civil aviation official Carlos Padilla described how the aircraft took off and ‘made a sharp turn to the right of the runway and fell into the water’.
A fisherman below told explained how he narrowly escaped.
‘The plane almost fell on us. I was fishing,’ he explained.
Among those killed was popular Honduran musician and politician Aurelio Martinez.
The Garifuna are an Afro-indigenous people from St Vincent, who were exiled to Honduras in the 18th century.
His group Lita Ariran was, ‘one of the first Garifuna groups to appear on an internationally distributed recording,’ according to the Kennedy Center.
He later went into politics and was selected as a representative to the Honduran National Congress.
