Four teenagers were among the eight people on board a small plane that went down in the water off North Carolina's Outer Banks.
The single-engine Pilatus PC-12 plane was carrying the teens and other passengers back from a duck hunt on Sunday, authorities said. About 26 minutes into the flight, the plane began behaving erratically, vanished from radar and then crashed in the waters near Drum Inlet.
Teens Kole McInnis, Noah Styron and two of their friends were on board, along with Kole’s mother, Stephanie Fulcher, and her fiancé, Hunter Parks. Parks owned the plane.
“We have no indication that anyone survived the crash,” Carteret County Sheriff Asa Buck said in a news conference on Monday.
He also said authorities are “in the process of locating the main part of the plane with fuselage.”
Search and rescue teams have recovered the remains of one passenger who has not been publicly identified.
The U.S. Coast Guard, National Park Service beach crews, the Carteret County Sheriff's Office and other teams are involved in the search for remains and debris from the downed aircraft, according to a statement from the Coast Guard.
On Monday, the East Carteret High School Basketball Team’s Twitter page shared a message of condolence.
“Prayers for our students, faculty administrators, our community and the families of these individuals,” the tweet read. “No one expects to go to school on Monday without 4 of their fellow classmates with them anymore. We will get through this together.”
The nearby West Carteret High School also sent condolences, inviting their students to show their support by making cards to be delivered to the classmates of the teens involved in the crash.