A plane carrying well-known Mexican-American singer Jenni Rivera crashed in Mexico early Sunday morning, killing Rivera, her brother and the five other people onboard.
The Learjet 25 jet (N345MC) reportedly lost radar contact at around 3:40 am local time, about 10 minutes after taking off from Monterrey following a concert. It was enroute to the city of Toluca, near Mexico City.
Mexico’s Ministry of Communications and Transport late Sunday said search teams had located wreckage of a plane believed to have been Rivera’s located near the town of Iturbide, south of Monterrey.
N345MC was delivered in 1969 (just a few months after Rivera was born) and was owned by Las Vegas-based Starwood Management. NTSB records show the plane was involved in a landing mishap [PDF] in Amarillo, Texas, in 2005. In that incident, the plane suffered “substantial” damage when it ran off the side of the runway but was apparently repaired.
Jenni Rivera, a native of Long Beach, California, was 43. During her life she sold over 20 million copies of her 13 albums and was an active supporter of organizations that help battered women.
Introduced in 1967, the Learjet 25 is a mid-sized business jet that can carry up to 8 passengers with a crew of 2 pilots as far as 1,800 miles.
