1 dead, 7 missing after plane crashes off North Carolina coast

Authorities are searching for the wreckage of a plane that crashed off the coast of North Carolina with eight people aboard this weekend.

One person has been identified, but officials are still in the process of locating the remains of the other passengers, Carteret County Sheriff Asa Buck said in a press conference Monday.

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There is “no indication that anyone survived the crash,” he said.

The Pilatus PC-12 single-engine passenger aircraft crashed into the Atlantic Ocean on Sunday.

The Coast Guard responded that evening after receiving a report from an air traffic controller stating that an aircraft was seen behaving erratically on radar and then disappeared from the radar screen, according to a news release.

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The sheriff’s department, National Park Service beach crews, Towboat U.S. and the Down East Fire Department are also involved in the recovery efforts.

However, the search has been hampered by the wreckage being moved farther into the ocean.

“That search and some of the recovery went well into the evening, into the early morning,” Buck said. “And then this morning, numerous agencies came back out and located the debris field again which had moved further offshore – 5, 10, 15 miles offshore.”

Buck noted that there were three separate debris fields now.

“We are also still, at this time, in the process of locating the main part of the plane, the fuselage, in an attempt to locate that section of the plane and to continue to locate the passengers on board the plane,” he said.

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A Coast Guard representative said “vessels from as far away as Cape May, New Jersey,” are working on the search.

1 dead, 7 missing after plane crashes off North Carolina coast originally appeared on abcnews.go.com