Family of 4 Dead After Plane Hits Highway

Icing may have played a role in the crash of a small plane today on a New Jersey highway. All five people aboard were killed: Two New York City investment bankers, plus the wife and two children of one of the men, reports the Star-Ledger. The pilot, one of the bankers, had spoken briefly to an air traffic controller just before the crash about icing, though it's unclear as yet whether he was reporting a problem or making a general inquiry about conditions, notes AP.

The plane took off from Teterboro Airport bound for Georgia but crashed into Interstate 287 about 15 minutes later. "Something was breaking off the plane as it was coming down," a witness tells the New Jersey newspaper. "It was coming down fast. It looked like the right wing was breaking off." The two investment bankers were identified as Jeffrey Buckalew, 45, and Rakesh Chawla, 36, of Greenhill & Co. Buckalew's wife and children also were killed. Nobody on the ground was injured. (More plane crash stories.)