Jewish family on way to seder killed in plane crash
One of the victims, Karenna Groff, played for team USA at the 2019 European Maccabi Games
A Jewish family perished on Saturday when their private plane crashed en route to upstate New York to celebrate Passover.
Among those lost in Sunday’s crash were siblings Karenna Groff, 25, and Jared Groff, 26, and their parents, surgeons Michael Groff and Joy Saini. Karenna’s boyfriend James Santoro and Jared’s girlfriend Alexia Couyutas Duarte, 24, were also on board. Both couples planned to get engaged in the coming months, according to the Associated Press.
Michael Groff piloted the twin-engine plane which crashed in Copake, New York, after an unsuccessful landing attempt. The family’s youngest daughter, Anika, was not on board, according to the Associated Press.
Karenna Groff was the 2022 NCAA woman of the year when she played soccer for MIT. She was enrolled at NYU Grossman School of Medicine. In 2019, she played for the USA women’s soccer team at the European Maccabi Games in Budapest, Hungary.
The day of the crash, the Jewish Sports Heritage Association wished her a happy birthday in a post on Facebook. The family were set to celebrate her 25th birthday alongside their seder, according to the Jerusalem Post.
Michael Groff was a neurosurgeon at Rochester Regional Health in Western New York, having previously worked at Mass General Brigham in Boston and as an associate professor of neurosurgery at Harvard Medical School. Joy Saini was a urogynecologist at Boston Pelvic Health & Wellness.
“He was just a very human human being,” E. Antonio Chiocca, a colleague of Michael Groff at Mass General Brigham, told the Boston Globe. “He was very well-liked, very empathetic, very charismatic, very kind. He’s Jewish so we’d say, ‘He’s a real mensch.‘”
Jared Groff was a former basketball player at Swarthmore who worked as a paralegal, and his girlfriend Alexia Couyutas Duarte, a Colombia native, had plans to attend Harvard Law School in the fall. Karenna Groff’s boyfriend, James Santoro, was also an MIT graduate and worked in investment banking.
“They were all so accomplished, but it was never about their accomplishments,” John Santoro, James’s father, told the Associated Press. “Everyone considered them such a bright spot in their life. I’m sad for myself and my family, but I’m sad for everyone else who’ve lost them too.”
An exact cause of the crash remains unknown, according to a briefing Monday by Todd Inman, an official with the National Transportation Safety Board.
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