Six people, including four members of the same prominent Jewish family, have died following a plane crash as they travelled to celebrate Seder over the weekend.
Siblings Karenna and Jared Groff and their parents, Michael Groff and Joy Saini were killed when the family’s private plane went down near the town of Copake, New York after an unsuccessful landing attempt. Karenna and Jared’s partners, James Santoro and Alexia Couyutas Duarte, also perished in the crash.
Both young couples were set to announce their engagements in the coming months, according to the Associated Press.
Michael Groff, a neurosurgeon at Rochester Regional Health in Western New York and formerly a professor of neurosurgery at Harvard Medical School, had been piloting the twin-engine Mitsubishi MU-2B plane, but the exact cause of the crash remains unknown.
Saini was a urogynecologist at Boston Pelvic Health & Wellness, while Karenna was the 2022 NCAA woman of the year and played football for MIT. She had previously represented the USA women’s football team at the 2019 European Maccabi Games in Budapest.
Jared, a former basketball player, was a paralegal, while his girlfriend, Alexia, had plans to attend Harvard Law School in the fall. Karenna’s boyfriend, James, was also an MIT graduate and worked in investment banking.
The family was reportedly en route to the Catskills, a popular holiday area in upstate New York, to celebrate Karenna’s 25th birthday and Seder night. The family’s youngest daughter, Anika, was not on board.
James’s father, John, told the Associated Press: “They were a wonderful family. The world lost a lot of good people who were going to do a lot of good for the world if they had the opportunity. We’re all personally devastated.
“[The family] were all so accomplished, but it was never about their accomplishments,” he went on. “Everyone considered them such a bright spot in their life. I’m sad for myself and my family, but I’m sad for everyone else who’ve lost them too.”
A colleague of Michael’s at Mass General Brigham Hospital, told the Boston Globe that Michael was “just a very human human being”, adding, “he was very well-liked, very empathetic, very charismatic, very kind. He’s Jewish so we’d say, ‘he’s a real mensch’.”
