Plane crash off Caribbean island kills at least 12 people, including popular Honduran musician Aurelio Martinez

At least 12 people including a popular musician died Monday when a small plane crashed into the Caribbean sea quickly after taking off from the Honduran island of Roatan, officials said. The Lanhsa Airlines plane departed at nightfall from Roatan, one of the central American country’s main tourist destinations, headed for the port of La Ceiba on the Honduran mainland.

The aircraft “made a sharp turn to the right of the runway and fell into the water,” civil aviation official Carlos Padilla said.

“The plane almost fell on us. I was fishing,” a fisherman, whose name was not given, told HCH television.

The plane carried 17 passengers and crew, five of whom were rescued and hospitalized.  

Dramatic video posted to social media by the national police showed rescue workers carrying a survivor on a stretcher onto the rocky shore. Another video showed a similar scene, with police reporting that only one body was still missing as rescue teams continued their search.

Roatan fire captain Franklin Borjas told the Reuters news agency that survivors were taken to a nearby hospital but provided no information on their conditions. Borjas told Reuters that the search and rescue efforts were complicated by the terrain.

“It’s been difficult to access the accident (site) because there are 30 meters of rocks and you can’t get there while walking or swimming,” he told Reuters. “The divers helping with the rescue have zero visibility.”

Among the victims was Aurelio Martínez, a former member of Congress and member of the Garifuna ethnic group, which is of mixed African and Indigenous heritage.  Martínez also held U.S. citizenship. His representative, Helene Odile Guivarch, a French citizen, was among the survivors.

Martínez was originally from Honduras’ Gracias a Dios region along the country’s Caribbean coast.

“We’re devastated,” his nephew Ángel Aparicio Fernández Martínez, also a musician who played with his uncle, said Tuesday. “He was the family’s pillar.”

Martínez was a member of Los Gatos Bravos before forming his own group Lita Ariran. His first album “Garifuna Soul” took him to Europe, the United States and other parts of the world.

“He was the greatest model from Honduras of Garifuna music on a worldwide stage,” his nephew said.

“Martinez’s virtuosic musicianship and passionate performances made him a mainstay of the La Cieba music scene, where he was best loved for his take on punta rock, the high-energy, Garifuna roots-infused pop genre that took Central America by storm in the 1990s,” according to the Kennedy Center.

Fifteen passengers were on the plane, along with two pilots and a flight attendant, according to police.

The crash, which happened about half a mile from the island’s coast, was caused by an “apparent mechanical failure” on the British-made Jetstream 41, the police statement said.

Honduran President Xiomara Castro said she had “immediately activated” an emergency committee made up of the armed forces, firefighters and others to assist the victims of the accident.

contributed to this report.