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The crash site in Gaithersburg, Maryland. Source: AP
A SMALL private jet has slammed into a house here, killing a woman and her young sons inside the home and three people on the aircraft.
Gaithersburg is a suburb of Washington DC. It took hours for fire crews to sweep the home and to confirm that three people were inside, Montgomery County Fire and Rescue Chief Steve Lohr said.
They were identified as Marie Gemmell, 36, and her two sons, three-year-old Cole and one-month-old Devon, police said.
They were found in a second-floor bathroom.
Ms Gemmell was lying on top of her young sons in an apparent effort to shield them from the smoke and fire, said police Captain Paul Starks.
Her husband and a school-age daughter were not at 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 Âbelieve one of its wings, which had fuel inside, 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 second explosion after the plane hit the ground.
The two-storey, wood-frame home was gutted.
The first floor was blown out and smoke drifted from a gaping hole in what was left of the collapsing roof.
No one was injured in the Âadjacent homes, which also had major damage.
The founder and chief executive of Health Decisions, a clinical research organisation based in Durham in North Carolina, Michael Rosenberg, was among those on the plane.
Dr Rosenberg was the pilot of a different plane that crashed in Gaithersburg in 2010, according to a government official.
Investigators are still trying to determine if Dr Rosenberg was at the controls at the time of the Âlatest crash.
Fred Pedreira, 67, who lives near the crash site, said he had just returned home from the Âshops and was parking his car when he saw the jet flying low and fast.
“This guy, when I saw him, for a fast jet with the wheels down, I said to myself, ‘I think he’s coming in too low’,†Mr 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.’’
AP