A niece of the missing Florida couple has issued an emotional public plea for help with search-and-rescue efforts after their private plane crashed in the Bahamas with four family members aboard.
Silvia Larrieu, whose aunt and uncle were piloting the aircraft, posted a video statement begging anyone with resources to join the hunt for the wreckage. “Please help,” she said. “I ask anybody out there, if you can help with search and rescue efforts, we would greatly appreciate it. We need to bring them home.”
The five-seater PA-34 Piper went down Monday afternoon roughly 13 miles west of Andros Island, according to the Royal Bahamas Police Force. The aircraft had departed Great Harbor Cay that morning and was bound for Opa-locka, Florida, when it plummeted into the water at approximately 2:20 p.m.
Pilot Mario Lamar, 80, and his wife Lili Lamar, 79, were traveling with two of their grandchildren, Sofia Sosa, 28, and Christian Sosa, 22, the family told the Miami Herald.
FlightAware data showed the plane’s speed fluctuating wildly before its altitude collapsed from 10,000 feet to 3,700 feet in just three minutes. The aircraft then vanished from radar entirely.
Rough weather near the north end of Andros Island hampered initial search efforts by Bahamian forces, Larrieu said. The challenging conditions delayed the start of the physical hunt for the wreckage and any possible survivors.
The US Coast Guard has joined the operation, deploying an HC-144 Ocean Sentry airplane to assist Bahamian authorities in scanning the crash zone, the agency announced in a social media statement.
Mario Lamar brought decades of experience to the cockpit. His family said in a statement that the pilot had logged more than 40 years of flying time, a detail relatives hope underscores that mechanical failure or weather—not operator error—may have caused the disaster.
The grandchildren aboard the flight were both recent university graduates. Sofia Sosa had just finished her studies at Wake Forest University, while her younger brother Christian had recently graduated from Loyola Marymount University.
The four had spent the Labor Day weekend at the Lamars’ vacation property on Great Harbor Cay, a second home where they had gathered for years. “They’ve spent their whole life going there. That’s like their second home,” Larrieu told the Miami Herald. “They were coming home.”
The Bahamas crash comes amid heightened scrutiny of private aviation safety in the region, though investigators have not yet identified any preliminary cause for this incident. Bahamian authorities are leading the probe with American assistance.
Search teams are expected to continue combing the waters west of Andros Island as weather permits.