Canadian man among 3 dead after small plane crashes in Maryland

A Canadian man is among three people who died when a plane they were in crashed over the weekend.

Maryland state police identified the Canadian as 20-year-old Elad Naidik. They did not say where in Canada he was from.

The other victims were identified as 26-year-old Yoav Bomrind, an Israeli national who was piloting the plane, and 19-year-old David Rabinovich, also from Israel.

The preliminary investigation indicates that at roughly 11:30 p.m. Saturday, a single-engine Piper Cherokee was en route from Ocean City, N.J., to the Montgomery County Air Park in Gaithersburg, Md., when it crashed into a wooded area in Bowie, Md.

Authorities were notified of the incident at 11:45 p.m. after an iPhone crash alert was received by Prince George’s County Public Safety Communications. The wreckage was located at approximately 3:45 a.m. Sunday in a wooded area near a neighbourhood in Bowie.

“Investigators believe the aircraft belongs to a local flight school in Montgomery County. Police believe the aircraft may have been participating in a training flight,” Maryland state police said in a statement.

The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board and Federal Aviation Administration are leading the ongoing investigation.