Learjet crashes into a Palm Beach County mobile home neighborhood, killing all nine people aboard

The jet fell out of the sky over a neighborhood where people were home on a Sunday afternoon. It came down in an unincorporated area near Greenacres and Palm Springs, a few miles south of the West Palm Beach airport, and hit a mobile home neighborhood, demolishing at least one trailer and starting fires across the site, according to the first reports from the scene. The Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office closed Military Trail in both directions around Cresthaven Boulevard and 10th Avenue North and told drivers to stay away from the area.

The FAA said the Learjet 60 had departed Austin, Texas, and was headed to North Eleuthera in the Bahamas with nine people aboard. Flight tracking data cited by CNN from ADS-B Exchange shows the aircraft descended 27,000 feet in about one minute before the tracking signal cut off. No cause has been announced, and nothing in the first official statements explains the fall. One witness account carried in the New York Post said the impact sounded like a missile.

Duffy confirmed that all nine people on the aircraft died. DeSantis, at a news conference, said there were no reports of anyone on the ground killed or injured. County Commissioner Joel Flores, the first county official at the scene, said about 600 people were in need of shelter because of the damage on the ground, as of Sunday evening. CNN, reading the NTSB's records, counts this as the second deadliest aviation crash in the United States this year, after a June skydiving plane crash in Butler, Missouri, that killed 12.

The National Transportation Safety Board is leading the investigation and is sending a go-team, with investigators arriving at the site on Sunday and Monday and a news conference planned for Monday. The names of the nine people killed had not been released on Sunday evening.