Brazil: Rich businessman and 9 members of his family die in plane crash

Ten members of the same family died Sunday when their small plane crashed in a commercial area in the tourist town of Gramado, in the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul (south), Civil Defense reported. The victims are businessman Luiz Claudio Salgueiro Galeazzi, originally from the state of Sao Paulo (south), and nine of his relatives who were traveling with him, civil police confirmed to AFP.

The pilot was the businessman himself and there are no survivors. Seventeen other people were injured on the ground, two of them seriously, according to Civil Defense. The device, a Piper Cheyenne 400, crashed in the morning “on the chimney of a building, then on the second floor of a house and then on a furniture store,” the secretariat detailed in a press release. at Public Security of Rio Grande do Sul. “An inn was also affected,” he added.

A crash in the first minutes of flight

The plane took off from the neighboring municipality of Canela, another tourist destination in Rio Grande do Sul, then crashed minutes after takeoff. The causes of the accident are under investigation.

Last August, Brazil experienced its worst air tragedy in 17 years, when a twin-engine plane with 62 passengers on board crashed in a residential area of ​​Vinhedo, Sao Paulo, leaving no survivors. The Gramado tragedy is the second serious accident in the country over the weekend, after 41 people died in a bus accident in Minas Gerais (southeast) on Saturday.