The Learjet broke up before it hit the ground, investigators say, and the families name all nine who died

The jet left Austin Bergstrom International Airport at 10:37 a.m. on Sunday, bound for North Eleuthera in the Bahamas, operated by Aurora Airlines, doing business as Upper Jets. It carried a pilot, a co-pilot and seven passengers. At 12:47 p.m. the crew told Miami air traffic control they were meeting ice and turbulence and asked to climb to 37,000 feet, and the climb was approved. Less than 30 seconds later the jet was falling. The crew called mayday and reported descending at 8,000 feet a minute, then 10,000, then an overspeed condition at 20,000 feet a minute. It struck the ground at Military Trail and Cresthaven Boulevard at about 12:50 p.m. and burst into flames.

At a Monday briefing in Palm Beach County, board member Tom Chapman said investigators have evidence the airplane was breaking up before impact, and that pieces may be found at a distance from the crash site. Senior investigator Timothy Monville said the hardest problem the team faces is recovering the major wreckage from the crater the jet dug into the roadway. About 20 investigators are on the scene. Whether the jet carried a cockpit voice recorder, and whether any recorder survived the fire, is still unknown. The crew's report of clear ice and air temperatures of 53 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, in the middle of stormy weather, will be a major focus of the investigation, officials said. No cause has been determined.

The names came from the families, not from the government. In a joint statement issued late on Monday, the passengers' families identified Adam Robinson, 45, a technology company founder, his wife Helen Sharp, 40, who ran a communications firm and a ceramics studio, their daughter Emma, 2, and their son Charlie, 4, the children's nanny Anita Maria Cetina, and a second couple, Rachael Reed and Charmi Fehr. “Adam and Helen were devoted parents, and Emma and Charlie were the light of their lives,” the families said. Robinson's brother confirmed the family's deaths on Monday. The pilot, Jeffrey Gregory, 55, was an experienced captain. The co-pilot, Nathalia Gadelha Filgueiras, 20, earned her pilot's license while still in high school and attended the Academy of Aviation and Aerospace at West Boca Raton High School. The Palm Beach County Medical Examiner's Office said on Monday it was still working to identify all nine officially. CNN reported that Sunday's crash was the second deadliest airplane crash in the United States this year, according to NTSB records.

On the ground, the county spent Monday with a neighborhood that cannot go home. Close to 600 people from the mobile home park beside the crash site were evacuated on Sunday, and officials said Monday they did not know when residents could return. Debris damaged cars, cut power and broke a water main. One man was struck in the leg by debris and suffered minor injuries, the one ground injury officials reported. The investigation on the roadway and the empty park next to it will run side by side for days.