Shock as eighth person dies after jet exploded in fireball that devastated Philadelphia street
Dominique Goods-Burke died in the hospital from her burns on April 27, roughly three months after debris from the medical transport plane hit her car.
Goods-Burke, 34, was in the car with her fiancé, Steven Dreuitt, and his son. Dreuitt, 37, died after the vehicle was engulfed in flames, while his son survived but suffered severe burns.
The family had been on a shopping trip to Macy's when the tragedy happened, according to FOX 29, the local TV station that first learned of Goods-Burke's death.
Goods-Burke and Dreuitt were the only two people on the ground who died, though 24 others were injured. All six people on board the plane died in the explosion when it crashed along Cottman Avenue on January 31 at around 6:10pm.
Goods-Burke leaves behind two children, aged 15 and six years old, according to a GoFundMe that raised more than $34,000 for her treatment and her family.
She worked as the baking supervisor at the High Point Cafe, which has two locations in northwest Philadelphia.
The cafe's founder, Meg Hagele, hired her 10 years ago and said her leadership and friendship will be sorely missed.
'This place feels really empty and a little haunted. She was an amazing mom, she was an incredible baker, she held this place together,' Hagele told FOX 29.
'She just ran this ship tight. Her daughter would come after school sometimes, and we would be in the lounge area while she finished up. She was just an incredible part of this family that will never be the same.'
'We're still reeling. It's been three months, and we're all still sort of figuring that out,' she said.
Goods-Burke's funeral will be held on May 8, just over two months after the 'celebration of life' ceremony for Dreuitt, her late fiancé.
The plane crash happened on a Friday evening and involved a Learjet 55 air ambulance that had taken off from Northeast Philadelphia Airport.
Among those on board were 11-year-old Valentina Guzman Murillo and her mother, 31-year-old Lizeth Murillo.
Valentina had just spent four months at a children's hospital in Philadelphia getting treatment for a serious birth defect that affected her spine.
The plane was bound for Missouri and was then set to head back to Tijuana, Mexico, where Valentina and her mother were from.
Also on board was pilot Alan Alejandro Montoya Perale, co-pilot Josué Juárez of Veracruz, doctor Raúl Meza and paramedic Rodrigo Lopez Padilla, each of whom had dedicated themselves to ensuring the child's safe return.
All six people on the plane were Mexican nationals.
The National Transportation Safety Board, which is investigating the crash, said the voice recorder on the plane was not working properly. The recorder was found eight feet underground at the site of impact.
The audio that was recovered in the immediate aftermath demonstrated that the pilot could barely be heard by air traffic controllers, with some speculating that there was 'a moan' just before the plane was declared 'lost.'
The Philadelphia plane crash came just two days after an American Airlines jet and an Army helicopter crashed mid-air over the Potomac River in Washington, DC.
All 67 people on board the helicopter and the passenger aircraft died, making it the deadliest plane crash in the United States in the past 24 years.
A recent report in The New York Times claimed that the pilot of the Black Hawk helicopter maintained too high an altitude despite being told to descend by another crew member.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Daily Mail
28 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Heartstopping bodycam shows four people being pulled from crashed plane moments after it slammed onto Florida street
Dramatic bodycam footage shows the tense moments after a small plane carrying a family home from their vacation crashed into a Florida neighborhood. The aircraft was carrying a family of four home from a trip to Turks and Caicos when it hurtled into a residential street in Pembrokes Pines last month. A video camera captured the heartstopping moment the plane plunged into a tree at top speed before toppling onto the grass. Neighbors rushed to their rescue first, crowding around the wreckage as sirens blared in the distance. Pembrokes Pines officers then responded to the frantic scene, where one shirtless resident was urging the neighbors to flee the area in fear that the downed plane might explode. One neighbor was spraying water from a garden hose on the smoking wreckage in a desperate attempt to extinguish the flames surrounding the aircraft, where the passengers remained. The passengers - including two teenage girls - were finally plucked out of the destroyed aircraft. Paramedics responded to the scene to aid the passengers, who all miraculously survived the crash with minor injuries. There could have been far more casualties had the plane not narrowly missed houses in the neighborhood. Bodycam footage showed one of the plane's occupants being placed on a gurney. Meanwhile, rescue workers tried to comfort a distressed girl who had been on board as she sat on a nearby yard. Officials can be heard comforting the hysterical passenger, telling her to take 'deep breaths'. Another person can be seen with a bandage on their head while a man believed to be the pilot is given a neck brace and placed on a gurney. Officers can be heard discussing the crash in the bodycam footage. 'How lucky did that house get? How lucky is that house? Imagine if that would have fallen on the house? Crazy, right?' one officer says. 'They got so lucky it didn't explode.' The July 13 crash happened while the plane was attempting to lane at North Perry Airport, according to National Transportation Safety Board officials. Surveillance footage showed the aircraft toppling down a mile short of the runway. The plane narrowly missed houses as it slammed onto the street near Southwest 14th Street and 68th Boulevard. NTSB and Federal Aviation Administration are investigating the crash, which has been a cause of concern for locals who are wondering why the plane missed the airport by a mile. A town hall meeting to discuss the crash is set to take place on August 27. The purpose of the meeting is to 'review overall safety issues at the airport' and it will be presented by District 7 Commissioner Alexandra P. Davis.
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
NYC woman finds diamond for her engagement ring at Arkansas state park
A New York woman has found a 2.30-carat colorless diamond in an Arkansas state park and repurposed it as her engagement ring. Micherre Fox, 31, of Manhattan, New York, went on a month-long hunt in July to the state's Crater of Diamonds state park to search for gems and came up lucky on the last day, according to Arkansas state parks. 'Having never seen an actual diamond in my hands, I didn't know for sure, but it was the most 'diamond-y diamond' I had seen,' Fox told the park service. The service said it was the third largest of 366 diamonds found in the park this year. It describes the Crater of Diamonds – a 37-acre, eroded surface of a volcanic crater near Murfreesboro, as 'the only place in the world where the public can search for real diamonds in their original volcanic source.' 'Any rock or mineral you find is yours to keep,' it says. 'You may bring your own mining equipment to search with (no battery-operated or motor-driven mining tools allowed), or rent tools from the park.' Waymon Cox, assistant superintendent of the park, said Fox's digging story 'highlights the fact that, even when putting forth your best effort, being in the right place at the right time plays a part in finding diamonds'. Fox's story comes with a message of self-determination. She decided two years ago that she wanted to find her own diamond for an engagement ring, telling the park service that 'there's something symbolic about being able to solve problems with money, but sometimes money runs out in a marriage. You need to be willing and able to solve those problems with hard work.' Her partner, and presumably prospective husband, was supportive of the project. 'I was willing to go anywhere in the world to make that happen,' Fox said. 'I researched, and it turned out that the only place in the world to do it was right in our back yard, in Arkansas.' When she spotted something glistening at her feet, Fox thought it could be a dew-covered spiderweb. But she soon realized it was a shiny stone. The park identified it as a diamond. 'I got on my knees and cried, then started laughing,' she said. Most of the diamonds found in the volcanic crater are white, brown and yellow. In total, over 75,000 diamonds have been unearthed there since diamonds were discovered in 1906. The largest discovered, at 40.23 carats, is named Uncle Sam, and now sits on display in the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. The dig-your-own/bring-a-trowel trend may catch-on as a signal of commitment, since the allure of diamonds is on the rocks. Lab-grown diamonds, created in plasma reactors, have badly damaged the natural diamond market, the Guardian reported earlier this year. Prices for both, lab-grown and natural, are falling fast and show no signs of stopping. De Beers, the biggest name in diamonds, said it began 2024 with a huge $2bn stockpile of diamonds and had not managed to shift it by the year's end. The company has cut production in its mines by 20%, and its owner, Anglo American, has put it up for sale.
Times
an hour ago
- Times
American zoos don't feed ponies to the lions — should they?
American zoos would never feed ponies to the lions — even though giving whole carcasses to predators is a 'healthy' practice, a North American zoo chief says. A Danish zoo has caused global outrage by asking the public to donate chickens, rabbits, guinea pigs and horses so they could be 'gently euthanised' and fed to its predators. Daniel Ashe, the chief executive of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA), said the idea would be 'frowned upon' in the US. 'These are cultural norms that we're talking about,' said Ashe, whose association has about 220 zoos in the US. 'The Danish zoo has a different cultural norm and practices.' Even so, experts are in agreement that feeding predators whole carcasses is important for their welfare. 'It's stimulating for the animals,' Ashe said. 'They're feeding on the meat, the cartilage, the tendon and bone and hide. The same feeding they do in nature. It's nutritious for them, it's healthy for them. Behaviourally, it's important to them as well.' Earlier this month Aalborg Zoo posted an appeal for pet donations on its Facebook page, which received a 'hateful and malicious' response, according to zoo officials who insisted it would 'stand by' the practice. Pernille Sohl, who donated her daughter's dying pony to Aalborg Zoo, told The Sunday Times the practice 'might sound very dramatic … but they are going to be put down anyway and it is not like they are alive when they are given to the predators'. • I gave the zoo my daughter's beloved pony to be fed to the lions So far this year, Aalborg Zoo has received 22 horses, 137 rabbits, 53 chickens and 18 guinea pigs, which have been turned into dinner for the lions, tigers, European lynxes and other carnivores who live there. Most other Danish zoos also accept pet donations. Ashe said the predators in AZA's zoos were fed animals that could be easily sourced via regulated commercial and agricultural suppliers, including pigs, sheep, goats and lamb. The zoos have to make sure they are sourcing 'meat products that are graded by the US Department of Agriculture,' he explained. Horse meat is not graded by the department so it is not available in America as a food supply for zoos. Some zoos, however, work with state and local natural-resource agencies to take roadkill such as deer for food, he said. Although Americans may not have an appetite for feeding their horses and guinea pigs to the lions, they are still fascinated by the sight of predators tucking into other animals, Ashe said, adding: 'I was at Denver Zoo about two weeks ago and they were carcass-feeding their lions. They were using pig carcasses. 'It was advertised to the guests at 1pm. Appropriate warnings were issued in case people didn't want to see something like this. But it was packed. I mean, you could not get a place next to the railing. People enjoy seeing animals engaging in natural behaviour.' If predators are fed only filleted meat they can develop nutritional deficiencies, dental problems, boredom-induced stress and unnatural feeding patterns, zoologists say. Aalborg Zoo is not the only European zoo that has faced backlash this month. Critics also rounded on Nuremberg Zoo in Germany last week after it announced it had culled 12 Guinea baboons due to chronic overcrowding in their enclosure. Half were then fed to the zoo's lions, tigers, maned wolves and marbled polecats. The skeletons of the remaining monkeys will be put on display in a museum. The baboons were decapitated and their hands and feet removed, 'out of respect for visitors' who would see the carnivores feeding, Jörg Beckmann, the zoo's deputy director, told DPA, the German news agency. Ashe said AZA's zoos did not cull their animals as a means of population control. 'We manage our animal population so that we don't have a lot of surplus animals,' Ashe said. 'We don't euthanise animals for management purposes. It's allowable under our policies but in general, if our members have an animal you don't need, then we look for an alternate home.' He added that Americans had a different attitude towards animal breeding from Europeans, which has led to their opposing practices around death. 'Other cultures believe that breeding is a necessary kind of life behaviour and that animals should be allowed to breed,' he said. 'But then that presents the challenge, what do you do with the animals that might be surplus?' AZA has 30 overseas members in countries like Korea, the UAE, Canada and Colombia. Not all follow the same practices as those in the US, Ashe said. He added that some of AZA's members in Korea did not euthanise animals that may be close to death. 'When we're doing accreditation visits, our inspectors are like, 'Wow, this animal seems like it's not in great condition.' 'They just have a different value set. 'Well, as long as it's eating and can interact with its social group.' And they want to support it. Whereas here in the US we would euthanise it. We have to put our standards into the context of different cultural norms.'
