Former New Jersey Nets and Devils owner Lewis Katz, who just bought the Philadelphia Inquirer, was one of seven people killed in a fiery private jet crash in Massachusetts.
Anne Leeds, the 74-year-old wife of a Longport, New Jersey town commissioner, was also killed on the Gulfstream IV as it left Hanscom Field in Bedford about 9:40 p.m. Saturday for Atlantic City in New Jersey.
Commissioner James P. Leeds Sr. told the Associated Press he received a text from his wife four minutes before the crash saying the plane was about to take off.
The National Transportation Safety Board said Sunday that the jet never became airborne, but left the runway and rolled through grass before bursting through a chain-link fence and ending up in a gully 2,000 feet away, according to the Boston Globe.
Matthew Brelis, a spokesman for the Massachusetts Port Authority, said there were no survivors.
“Our thoughts and prayers are with the people on board and their loved ones,” he said.
Katz and Leeds, his next door neighbor and a retired preschool teacher, had been at an event at the home of Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Doris Kearns Goodwin.
His longtime partner Nancy Phillips, who is the city editor at the Inquirer, was not on the plane. There were two other people on the board, and three crew members.
Susan Asbell, the wife of former Camden County Prosecutor, was also identified as a victim, according to NBC Philadelphia.
Marcella Dalsey, a mother of four and the executive director of the Drew. A. Katz Foundation, was also on the plane, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Katz, a 72-year-old billionaire, made his fortune investing in the Kinney Parking empire and the Yankees Entertainment and Sports Network in New York.
He had owned the New Jersey Nets and the New Jersey Devils, and was a major donor to Temple University, where he went to college.
Katz and philanthropist Harold H.F. Lenfest bought The Inquirer, which operates the Philadelphia Daily News and the news website Philly.com, for $88 million.
Lenfest said Sunday that the deal, which many had hoped would end months of infighting at the Inquirer, will still go forward, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Katz had vowed to fund in-depth journalism and keep the Inquirers’ editor Marimow.
“It’s going to be a lot of hard work. We’re not kidding ourselves. It’s going to be an enormous undertaking,” he had said. “Hopefully, [the Inquirer] will get fatter.”
Nearby residents told the Boston Globe they saw a fireball and felt the blast of the explosion shake their homes.
Jeff Patterson said he saw a fireball about 60 feet in the air and suspected the worst for those aboard the plane.
“I heard a big boom, and I thought at the time that someone was trying to break into my house because it shook it,” his 14-year-old son Jared told the Globe. “I thought someone was like banging on the door trying to get in.”
An aviation expert told New England Cable News that many things could have caused the explosion.
“The engine could implode, if you will,” said Steve Cunningham, of the New Hampshire-based Nashua Flight Simulator. “A turbine wheel could separate, there could be a fire in the combustion chamber. Or a fuel leak could also create a fire of that nature.”