NEW YORK, United States (AFP)– The FBI is investigating an “intentional” crash of a small plane in Connecticut that killed a Jordanian student and injured an American flight instructor, officials and US media said Wednesday.
The plane exploded in a fireball on Tuesday in East Hartford, about 120 miles (192 kilometers) northeast of New York. The flight instructor, who survived the crash, told investigators it was not an accident, The New York Times reported.
The dead person was identified as trainee pilot, Feras Freitekh, 28, who the Times said was Jordanian. He was issued a private pilot certificate last year and certified to fly a single-engine plane, the newspaper said.
The doomed Piper PA-34 was on its final approach to East Hartford airport when it crashed, knocking out power lines, US media reported.
“The crash is the result of an intentional act,” the National Transportation Safety Board said Wednesday.
The Jordanian embassy in Washington said it was in touch with US authorities over “the tragic incident.”
Police said the plane crashed near Pratt and Whitney, an aerospace company that manufactures engines for military and commercial aircraft.
The company has 33,500 employees worldwide and generated revenues of $14 billion last year, according to its website.
FBI investigators were combing the crash site, Lieutenant Josh Litwin of East Hartford police told reporters.
“This plane crash was intentional,” he said. “The circumstances beyond that are still being investigated.”
The Hartford Courant newspaper said the crash appears to have been a case of suicide, reporting that nothing had yet been found to indicate terrorism.
“Unfortunately, this looks, at this point, like an individual who wanted to end his life and used this event to do it,” it quoted a federal official as saying on condition of anonymity in reference to the student pilot.
The student and his instructor argued shortly before the crash, US media said.
An American mother and three daughters aged five to 17 — who were in a vehicle close to where the plane crashed — were taken to hospital but have since been released, shaken but not injured, police said.
Television footage showed the plane’s wreckage in flames on the street.
“It was like a movie scene,” one witness told NBC television.
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