'The End Of My Family': 4 Victims ID’d In Deadly VA Plane Crash

VIRGINIA — Family and friends have identified the four people killed when an unresponsive private plane flying over the D.C. area crashed in rural Virginia on Sunday after fighter jet pilots scrambled to intercept it, causing a sonic boom heard in the District, Maryland, and Virginia.

The plane, a Cessna 560 Citation V, crashed in the mountains in the George Washington National Forest near Washington, D.C. Experts said flight data suggests the pilot might have fallen unconscious due to a loss of air pressure and the plane flew on autopilot until it ran out of fuel, The Washington Post reported.

The plane, which had taken off from Elizabethton Municipal Airport in Elizabethton, Tennessee, and was headed for MacArthur Airport on Long Island, was registered to Encore Motors of Melbourne, a Florida-based company owned by John and Barbara Rumpel, aviation records show.

Rumpel's daughter, 49-year-old Adina Azarian, his 2-year-old granddaughter, Aria Azarian, Aria's nanny, and the pilot were killed in the crash, Rumpel told the Washington Post and The New York Times. Rumpel identified the pilot as Jeff Hefner, a pilot qualified to fly Boeing 737 jets, among other aircraft, he told the Post.

"That's the end of my family," Rumpel told the Post, his voice breaking. "It's just my wife and I now."

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Evadnie Smith was the live-in nanny for Azarian who died in the crash, according to reports.
Originally from Jamaica, Smith helped care for Aria at her mother’s East Hamptons, New York, home, according to the US Sun.

The plane took off in Tennessee at 1:13 p.m. Sunday. Only minutes into a doomed journey, the pilot was not responding to air traffic control instructions, and the situation was soon reported to a network that includes military, security, and law enforcement agencies, according to federal aviation officials.

The plane then took an erratic flight path, turning over Long Island to fly directly over the nation's capital, prompting the military to send fighter jets. The fighter jets' attempt to intercept the plane caused a loud sonic boom heard by residents from Annapolis and Bowie, Maryland, to Woodbridge, Arlington, and Fairfax, Virginia, shortly before 3 p.m. Sunday.

Flight tracking sites showed the jet suffered a rapid spiraling descent, dropping at one point at a rate of more than 30,000 feet per minute before crashing in the St. Mary's Wilderness.

On Monday, it took investigators several hours to hike into the rural area where the plane crashed about 60 miles southwest of Charlottesville. They expect to be on the scene for at least three to four days.

At a briefing Monday, NTSB investigator Adam Gerhardt said the wreckage is "highly fragmented," and investigators will examine the most delicate evidence at the site, after which the wreckage will be moved to Delaware, where it can be further examined. It was not clear if the plane had a flight data recorder. A preliminary report will be released in 10 days.

Rumpel told the Post his daughter, an entrepreneur known in New York real-estate circles, and granddaughter were returning home to East Hampton after visiting his house in North Carolina. A pilot who retired from flying 30 years ago, Rumpel told the Post he adopted Adina Azarian at age 40, years after losing his first daughter, Victoria, in a scuba diving accident when she was 19 years old.

"They had the same fire in their bellies, and they were loving, caring children," Rumpel said of Victoria and Adina Azarian, according to the Post. "We had no one else, and we loved her."

Friends and relatives described Azarian as a fiercely competitive entrepreneur who started her own brokerage and was raising her daughter as a single parent.

In an interview with Patch, close friend Tara Brivic-Looper shared her heartbreak. "I adored Adina. We were New York girls at Dwight and then she moved to East Hampton," she said.

Motherhood was everything to Azarian, Brivic-Looper said. "Aria was her life. She really was her miracle baby."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.