06-05-2025
Shock as eighth person dies after jet exploded in fireball that devastated Philadelphia street
An eighth person has died from injuries related to the Philadelphia plane crash in late January.
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.
