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Jewish family killed in plane crash en route to Seder celebrations

The Groff family were travelling to the Catskills for Seder night and to celebrate their daughter’s 25th birthday, when their private plane went down

April 16, 2025 11:01
TSB
Board member of the Transportation Safety Board, Todd Inman, announced the deaths of the Groff family at a press conference (Credit: ABC News/Youtube)
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Six people, including four members of the same prominent Jewish family, have died following a plane crash as they travelled to celebrate Seder over the weekend.

Siblings Karenna and Jared Groff and their parents, Michael Groff and Joy Saini were killed when the family’s private plane went down near the town of Copake, New York after an unsuccessful landing attempt. Karenna and Jared’s partners, James Santoro and Alexia Couyutas Duarte, also perished in the crash.

Both young couples were set to announce their engagements in the coming months, according to the Associated Press.

Michael Groff, a neurosurgeon at Rochester Regional Health in Western New York and formerly a professor of neurosurgery at Harvard Medical School, had been piloting the twin-engine Mitsubishi MU-2B plane, but the exact cause of the crash remains unknown.