WATONNA, Minn. (AP) ― Eight people died and a ninth was unaccounted for after a business jet carrying casino and construction executives crashed in heavy weather Thursday at the Owatonna city airport, authorities said.
Seven people were dead at the scene after the Raytheon Hawker 800, a charter jet flying from Atlantic City, N.J., went down while trying to land at Owatonna Degner Regional Airport. An eighth died later Thursday at a hospital.
One person was unaccounted for, although Steele County Sheriff Gary Ringhofer said it was possible that person had never gotten on the flight. The National Transportation Safety Board was sending a team to investigate.
Owatonna, a town of about 25,000 an hour south of Minneapolis, was just coming through a stretch of severe weather when the crash happened around 9:30 a.m. The jet, owned by East Coast Jets Inc., was carrying passengers with business at Viracon Inc., a glass manufacturing company based in Owatonna.
Atlantic City Mayor Scott Evans told The Associated Press that two high-ranking executives from Revel Entertainment, which is building a $2 billion hotel-casino project in Atlantic City, and several employees of Tishman Construction were on board the plane that crashed. He did not know their identities, but said Revel CEO Kevin DeSanctis was not aboard the plane. Tishman is helping with the revel project, a company spokesman said.
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