The Port TIMES RECORD PORT JEFFERSON • BELLE TERRE • PORT JEFFERSON STATION • TERRYVILLE
Volume 29, No. 13
February 25, 2016
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BRIDGES A Resource Guide Featuring Many of the Healthcare Services Provided to the Community by Stony Brook Medicine
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Anniversary
Times Beacon RecoRd neWs media • February 25, 2016
SBU & Local Business Resource Guide INSIDE
Plane crashes into harbor Photos from Margo Arceri
Above, emergency responders prepare to remove the airplane from the harbor. Below, divers with the Suffolk County Police Department pursue the aircraft as the missing person search continues.
Famous
Coach and businessman among sports hall of fame inductees
PAGES A14-A15
BY PHIL CORSO
Police are combing through the region where Port Jefferson Harbor and Setauket Harbor meet, near Poquott, after a small plane crashed there late Saturday night, authorities said. The small plane, which police said was a Piper PA-28 carrying four people, went down shortly after 11 p.m. near the vicinity of 108 Van Brunt Manor Rd., Poquott Mayor Dee Parrish said. An extensive response from emergency personnel followed,
during which three people were recovered from the water — but one remained missing, and that search was ongoing through the beginning of this week, officials reported. Police said on Sunday that a student pilot, 25-year-old Bronx resident Austricio Ramirez, was flying the plane when engine problems arose and turned the controls over to his instructor, 36-year-old Queens resident Nelson Gomez, who landed the plane in the harbor. All the passengers in the
four-seater plane were able to exit into the water, after which Ramirez, Nelson and passenger Wady Perez, a 25-year-old from Queens, were rescued by police. But Suffolk County Police Commissioner Tim Sini said the search and rescue operation remained in effect for one missing person, who was identified as 23-year-old Queens resident Gerson Salmon-Negron, with assistance from the U.S. Coast Guard. “We’re going to do everything we can to find that individual,”
Sini said over the weekend. The three people pulled from the water were treated at Stony Brook University Hospital, officials said. They have since been released. Peter Stubberfield of Poquott said he and his wife heard the plane flying immediately above their house, off the harbor, on Saturday night, and that was immediately followed by the sound of emergency vehicles. “Within minutes of hearing the plane, there were about 15 PLANE CRASH continued on page A9