Aug. 8--A small plane crashed in the backyard of an Upper Moreland home Thursday morning, killing a couple and their teenage daughter.
Upper Moreland Police Chief Michael Murphy confirmed the victims in the crash were the pilot, Jasvir "Jesse" Khurana, 60, his wife Divya, 54, and their 19-year-old daughter Kiran. The family lived in Lower Merion.
Jasvir Khurana was a professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at Temple University's Katz School of Medicine, where he studied bone disease.
"Dr. Khurana has been a valued faculty member in the Department of Pathology at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University since 2002. Our thoughts are with his family and loved ones," the university said in a statement.
Divya Khurana was a pediatric neurologist at St. Christopher's Hospital for Children and a professor at Drexel University College of Medicine.
The single-engine propeller plane went down around 6:20 a.m., shortly after taking off from Northeast Philadelphia Airport. Murphy said the three were bound for Columbus, Ohio, and planned to continue onto St. Louis, Missouri, for a family trip.
Another member of the Khurana family, an unnamed daughter in her 20s, was not on the flight.
An investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board conducting the investigation added Thursday afternoon there was no indication of a distress call from Khurana's single-engine plane to air traffic control prior to the crash.
An earlier report that air traffic lost contact with Khurana shortly after starting his flight just after 6 this morning was unconfirmed.
Murphy said the plane hit several trees before it finally came to rest in the backyard of a home on Minnie Lane. Debris was strewn across four yards, but no one on the ground was injured and the only damaged structure was an unoccupied outbuilding, authorities said.
It is estimated that the investigation at the crash site will continue for possibly the next four days, but the final report on what caused the crash could take a year or more, authorities said.
The plane did not have a black-box recording flight data, nor was it required to have one, authorities added.
John Quatrini lives nearby and told the Philadelphia Inquirer he was startled awake by a deafening sound.
"It sounded like the plane was coming right for my house," he said. "I thought, 'This is it, I'm done.'"
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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