• A twin-engine plane crash in Copake, New York, claimed six lives, including NCAA Woman of the Year Karenna Groff.
• The Groff family and friends were en route to celebrate Karenna's birthday and Passover when the crash occurred.
• The aircraft's pilot failed to respond to air traffic control moments before the crash.

A private plane crash in Copake, New York, claimed the lives of all six individuals on board, including Karenna Groff, the 2022 NCAA Woman of the Year, and her family members. The plane, a twin-engine Mitsubishi MU-2B, was on its way to celebrate Groff's 25th birthday and the Passover holiday when it went down shortly after noon in a muddy agricultural field a few miles from Columbia County Airport, according to authorities and family reports.

Among the victims were Groff's father, Dr. Michael Groff, a neuroscientist; her mother, Dr. Joy Saini, a urogynecologist; her brother, Jared Groff; his partner, Alexia Couyutas Duarte; and Groff's boyfriend, James Santoro, another MIT graduate. Just before the crash, the pilot communicated to air traffic controllers that he had missed his approach and requested a new plan, but did not respond to subsequent low altitude alerts as controllers attempted to make contact.

National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) officials indicated that the plane appeared to be intact until it crashed at a high rate of descent. The wreckage was found about ten miles south of its intended landing location and showed signs of being "compressed and buckled," according to NTSB official Todd Inman. Investigators have obtained video footage from the final moments of the flight as part of their ongoing investigation.

Karenna Groff was not only a distinguished soccer player at MIT but also co-founded openPPE during the pandemic, which focused on designing masks for essential workers. She had recently started medical school at NYU and was pursuing a career in medicine, following in the footsteps of her parents. "The world lost a lot of very good people who were going to do a lot of good for the world if they had the opportunity," lamented James Santoro's father, highlighting the family's potential contributions.