East Hampton Woman & Her 2-Year-Old Daughter Killed in Plane Crash

An East Hampton realtor and her 2-year-old daughter were among four people who died when a plane flying from Tennessee to Long Island crashed in Virginia on June 4.

Adina Azaria, 49, her daughter and her nanny were flying home from visiting her parents, John and Barbara Rumpel, in North Carolina when the plane circled Long Island, headed south and became unresponsive — triggering a security alert as it flew through restricted airspace over Washington, D.C. 

“My family is gone, my daughter and granddaughter.” Barbara wrote in a Facebook post.

Azaria, an East Hampton native, spent the past three years as a real estate broker for Keller Williams Realty, mostly serving communities in the Hamptons. The plane, a Cessna Citation owned by a company belonging to John Rumpel, plummeted about 30,000 feet in a minute, officials said.

In a release, the North American Aerospace Defense Command Region said, “the pilot was unresponsive and the Cessna subsequently crashed near the George Washington National Forest, Virginia. NORAD attempted to establish contact with the pilot until the aircraft crashed.”

The military scrambled an F-16 to intercept the plane and deployed flares in an attempt to get the pilot’s attention to no avail.

A loss of oxygen is a leading theory for why the business jet flew off course and over the nation’s capital Sunday before it crashed in rural Virginia. But federal investigators are just beginning to look for answers, and experts cautioned against jumping to conclusions.

“By far the most likely suspect is some sort of a pressurization issue,” said William Waldock, a professor of safety science who teaches aircraft accident investigation at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Arizona.

-With Associated Press