Fiery Ohio Plane Crash Kills Several From Jewish Family Business
Eight of nine people killed in an Ohio plane crash have been identified, seven from one south Florida company.
The passengers were employees of PEBB Enterprises, a real estate company in Boca Raton. No one survived the Tuesday evening crash of the chartered plane in Akron, Ohio.
The company is a family business founded by the late Paul Wiener; its name is made up the first letters of the names of Weiner, his wife Eleanor and their two children Barbara and Bruce, the Palm Beach Post reported.
Among those identified as being killed in the crash is Jared Wiener, son of Bruce.
The other dead are: Diane Smoot, Thomas Virgin, Gary Shapiro, Ori Rom, Diana Suriel and Nick Weaver. Rom is Jared Wiener’s brother-in-law. Andres Chavez has been identified as one of the pilots of the plane.
Rabbis at two Boca Raton synagogues told WPTV that victims of the crash were members of their congregations.
“As anyone might expect. It’s surreal. It’s a shock, ” said Rabbi Robert Silvers of Congregation B’nai Israel.
The jet was operated by Execuflight, based at Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport, and owned by Augusto Daniel Lewkowicz.
PEBB replaced its website’s home page with a message: “Our hearts are broken this morning with the news of the tragic accident that took the lives of two principals and five employees of Pebb Enterprises. We are shocked and deeply saddened for the families, colleagues and friends of those who perished. Our first priority is to give our fullest support to the family members and loved ones of our co-workers.”
The plane, which made no distress signals, crashed into a residential apartment building, destroying several apartments. No one was in the apartments at the time of the crash.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
