PHILADELPHIA — Seven people died when a medical transport plane crashed Friday evening in Northeast Philadelphia, including six Mexican nationals and one person who was in a car, officials said Saturday, cautioning the death toll could rise.

The search continues for the plane’s cockpit voice recorder, which could be damaged or in fragments due to the “high-impact” crash, Jennifer Homendy, chair of the National Transportation Safety Board, said at a news conference Saturday evening.

The Jet Rescue Air Ambulance plane had just taken off from Northeast Philadelphia Airport at 6:06 p.m. and was headed to Springfield-Branson National Airport in Missouri before continuing to Tijuana, Mexico. It crashed 3.5 miles away on Cottman Avenue near Roosevelt Boulevard, and first responders arrived at the scene at 6:11 p.m. to find “heavy fire coming from five residences and multiple vehicles and debris strewn across Cottman,” according to the mayor’s office.

The company said a pilot, copilot, flight physician, and paramedic, along with a pediatric patient and her escort were on the plane. All six were Mexican nationals, Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, said Saturday.

The patient had been treated at Shriners Children’s Philadelphia and was returning home with her mother on a “contracted air ambulance,” said a hospital spokesperson, describing the Shriners community as “heartbroken.”

Mayor Cherelle L. Parker confirmed that the six people aboard the plane died, and she revealed at a Saturday morning news conference that a seventh person who was in a car also perished. The death toll could rise because some people are still receiving treatment, Philadelphia Managing Director Adam K. Thiel said.

At least 19 on the ground were injured, Parker said, although she cautioned the number was still in flux. The survivors range in age from 4 to 85 years old, and suffered injuries from smoke inhalation to severe burns and a skull fracture, said a law enforcement source who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to publicly discuss an ongoing investigation.

”This is a tragedy in our city,” Parker said in a statement. “Our prayers are with the families, friends, neighbors, and all of those impacted by the tragic crash.”

Near the crash site, houses and cars caught fire Friday evening. Six people were released after being treated at Temple University Hospital’s Jeanes Campus in the Northeast. Another patient is in fair condition while being treated at Temple University Hospital’s Main Campus, a spokesperson said.

Jefferson Health provided care for 15 individuals, spokesperson Deana Gamble said. Of those, 12 have since been discharged, two were admitted for further care, and one was transferred to another hospital.

St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children was treating one child for injuries related to the plane crash as of Saturday afternoon, a spokesperson said.

Parts of Roosevelt Boulevard and Cottman and Bustleton avenues remained closed Saturday as investigators combed the scene where the plane crashed.

Debris may have fallen from the jet before it made impact, Thiel said.

”The area of impact — that area is roughly four to six blocks, and we also have debris in remote area where something happened with the aircraft,” Thiel said at the news conference. ”That’s something we’ll need to leave to the NTSB to talk about.”

Homendy, the agency’s chair, said that is something investigators will look into as it launches what could be “days to weeks” of evidence collection.

The crash caused power outages for about 250 properties and a minimal service interruption for Philadelphia Gas Works. Peco and PGW were working to restore service Saturday, Parker said. Detours for SEPTA routes around the crash site were posted on the transit agency’s website, septa.org, she said.

Gov. Josh Shapiro visited the crash site and offered praise and prayer.

“The good people of Northeast Philadelphia this morning at daybreak walked out from their homes, came down from their stoops, and saw carnage in their communities,” Shapiro said. “We also saw the very best of Northeast Philly, neighbor helping neighbor, folks looking out for one another.”

At Shriners Children’s Philadelphia, spokesperson Mel Bower said the pediatric patient who died in the crash had been receiving treatment for a condition that was not easily treated in Mexico. The girl had stayed at the hospital for about four months and made a strong impression on the staff and other patients she had befriended, Bower said.

”She is greatly missed this morning,” Bower said. “Her journey was one of hope and of aspiration.”

Shriners provides care to patients from 170 countries, and uses medical transport flights on an almost daily basis, Bower said.

Authorities had not released the names of any of the crash victims as of Saturday afternoon. But XE Médica Ambulancias, a Mexican emergency service, said that its chief of neonatology, Raúl Meza, was on the jet. The company said Meza was a pediatrician and neonatologist who studied medicine at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and graduated from the National Institute of Pediatrics. (Meza was not working for XE Médica Ambulancias while in Philadelphia.)

Another Jet Rescue Air Ambulance plane crashed in Mexico in 2023, killing five crew members, according to news reports and the company’s spokesperson. The plane, a Learjet 35A, crashed after landing at Cuernavaca Airport in Morelos, Mexico, after flying from Toluca, Mexico, wrote Shai Gold, a Jet Rescue spokesperson, in a 2023 post.

The plane that crashed in Philadelphia was a Learjet 55.

Pedro Evangelista couldn’t make sense of what he was seeing through his car’s front windshield Friday evening when an object was hurtling through the sky, turning it into a horrifying red color. Then, he heard a loud boom.

”I thought there was a war starting,” said Evangelista, a 33-year-old Amazon delivery driver. He had been running a routine errand, driving to the AutoZone a couple of minutes from his home to get a new radiator.

Evangelista saw flames, pulled his gold Toyota Corolla to the side of the road, and started running toward the wreckage.

”I was looking at somebody that was on fire. He was running trying to get help,” Evangelista said. “He didn’t say anything.”

An SUV and a home on the corner were ablaze. Other bystanders were crying.

”There were parts of bodies on the street,” Evangelista said. “I left the scene when I saw all of that.”

He went straight home to be with his wife, his 9-year-old son, and his 3-year-old daughter. Unsure what was happening, they had taken shelter in the basement. Soon, the family saw news reports, he said, and learned a plane had crashed in their neighborhood.

On Saturday morning, as news helicopters hovered over his home, Evangelista said the scene he had witnessed the night before felt all too real.

”I have a lot of very bad images” in his mind, he said. “It was very sad.”

At Four Seasons Diner on Cottman Avenue Saturday morning, a piece of cardboard taped to a window was the only reminder of what happened at the restaurant the night before when a piece of metal from the crash flew through the window, manager Ayhan Tiryaki said.

”It went right through, passed the window booths, and hit a costumer in the head, Tiryaki said.

The customer lost consciousness and was knocked to the floor, Tiryaki said. He tried to call 911, but no one answered, he said. He then found police officers around Roosevelt Boulevard and asked for help.

”One came in running and called for assistance,” he said, adding that an “ambulance was here fast and they took him.”

A chemical smell still clung to Elizabeth Griffin’s hair hours after she witnessed the fatal crash. Griffin, 31, was in a T-Mobile store on Friday night when she heard a boom.

”You just kind of felt a force hit you,” Griffin said. She turned to look out the store’s front windows and saw “a mushroom cloud of fire go up in the sky.”

After going outside, she was engulfed in ash and smoke before driving away.

”You just saw chunks of debris flying down into the parking lot and landing on cars,” she said.

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(Staff writers Paola Pérez, Michelle Myers, Aubrey Whelan, Ximena Conde, Diane Mastrull, Ellie Rushing, Robert Moran, Anna Orso, and Oona Goodin-Smith contributed to this article.)

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