A small commercial plane crash off the coast of Honduras left 12 people dead, including a well-known Garifuna musician, authorities said.

The Lanhsa Airlines flight crashed into the sea shortly after takeoff Monday night from the island of Roatan en route to the mainland city of La Ceiba.

It carried 17 passengers and crew, five of whom were rescued and hospitalized.

Police reported that the plane failed to reach full altitude and sank quickly after impact. Local fishermen rescued the survivors.

The Honduran Civil Aeronautics Agency said the crash is under investigation.

Among the victims was Aurelio Martínez Suazo, a former member of Congress and member of the Garifuna ethnic group, which is of mixed African and Indigenous heritage. Martínez Suazo also held U.S. citizenship. His representative, Helene Odile Guivarch, a French citizen, was among the survivors.

Martínez Suazo was originally from Honduras’ Gracias a Dios region along the country’s Caribbean coast.

“We’re devastated,” his nephew Ángel Aparicio Fernández Martínez, also a musician who played with his uncle, said Tuesday. “He was the family’s pillar.”

Martínez Suazo was a member of Los Gatos Bravos before forming his own group Lita Ariran. His first album “Garifuna Soul” took him to Europe, the United States and other parts of the world.

“He was the greatest model from Honduras of Garifuna music on a worldwide stage,” his nephew said.

Humberto Castillo, president of the Association of Afro-descendants of the Sula Valley, called Martínez Suazo “the ambassador of Garifuna culture,” noting that he spoke Garifuna and Miskito and composed music in both languages.

The victims bodies were taken from Roatan to the morgue in San Pedro Sula.

Source: AP
--Agencies