Former NCAA Honoree Karenna Groff and Family Among Passengers in Plane Crash

Air travel in 2025 has become increasingly unsettling, with a noticeable increase in aviation-related incidents — including multiple crashes. In a tragic sequence of events, just days after a helicopter plunged into the Hudson River and killed all six people on board, a small plane went down in upstate New York.

The crash occurred around 12:15 p.m. EST on Saturday, April 12, in an open field near Copake, N.Y. Among those on board was former Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) soccer standout Karenna Groff, along with several of her family members.

Here's everything we know so far.

As previously stated, Karenna Groff — who was named the 2022 NCAA Woman of the Year — was aboard a plane that crashed in New York on April 12, 2025. She was traveling with several close family members and loved ones at the time of the incident.

According to The Associated Press, on board with Karenna was her father, Dr. Michael Groff, a respected neuroscientist; her mother, Dr. Joy Saini, a renowned urogynecologist; and her younger brother, Jared Groff, a 2022 Swarthmore College graduate who had been working as a paralegal.

The family was also joined by Jared's partner, Alexia Couyutas Duarte, who also graduated from Swarthmore and had recently been accepted to Harvard Law School, where she was set to begin this fall. Also on board the aircraft was Karenna's boyfriend, James Santoro, a fellow recent graduate of MIT.

The outlet reported that the family had departed from Westchester County Airport in White Plains, a New York City suburb, on Saturday morning, flying in a private plane owned by Dr. Michael Groff. Their intended destination was Columbia County Airport, but the aircraft crashed roughly 10 miles south of its target.

National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) official Todd Inman told reporters, per The Associated Press, that the plane was found "compressed, buckled, and embedded in the terrain" of a muddy agricultural field.

Unfortunately, authorities and a family member confirmed to The Associated Press that all six individuals on board the plane were killed in the crash.

"They were a wonderful family," John Santoro, the father of Karenna's boyfriend, James, told the outlet. "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. We're all personally devastated."

According to investigators with the NTSB, shortly before the crash, the pilot contacted air traffic control at Columbia County Airport to report that he had missed his initial approach and was requesting a new landing plan.

While controllers worked to provide updated instructions, they issued three low-altitude alerts — but received no response from the pilot and heard no distress call.

Authorities also reviewed video footage capturing the plane's final moments, revealing that "the aircraft was intact and crashed at a high rate of descent into the ground."