Washington, June 16: Three Indian Americans, including an 11-year-old boy, were killed when a small family-owned plane nosedived into the Mohawk river on Sunday afternoon.
Albany-based hotelier George Kolath, who hails from Kerala, was entertaining his son and a doctor-friend when the Piper Cherokee went down shortly after taking off from the Mohawk Valley Airport, said Federal Aviation Administration spokesman, Jim Peters.
The bodies of the boy, George Kolath Jr., and the doctor, whose name was not released by authorities, were found, Kolath’s brother-in-law, Anil Paulose said.
However, the body of 42-year-old Kolath, owner of several hotels as well as a $ 40-million “castle” in Albany, is yet to be recovered, according to local media reports. The search was stopped as darkness fell.
“He stopped for lunch at a small airport. [After] their take off, we don’t know what happened,” Paulose said. “It [the plane] fell into the water.” Skip Ryan, a pilot who was also waiting to take off, said the plane appeared to lose power in the air, plunging nose-first into the river. The aircraft sank into some 30 feet of water.
A skydiving instructor at the Mohawk Valley Airport said he and others in the airstrip’s restaurant heard the crash and jumped into the river. George Kolath Jr., the eldest of six children, was a fifth-grader.
–PTI