The girl was one of six — four passengers and two crew members — onboard the Learjet 55 that plummeted out of the sky shortly after 6 p.m., less than a minute after taking off from Northeast Philadelphia Airport en route to Missouri’s Springfield-Branson National Airport.
The child was heading back to Tijuana with her mother, a doctor, paramedic, pilot and copilot, Shai Gold, spokesman for Jet Rescue Air Ambulance, told NBC 10 Philadelphia.
“All I can say is the patient was sponsored by a third-partner charity to undergo life-saving treatment in the US,” Gold said, adding, “She did her course of care. She was going home.
“She fought quite a lot to survive, and unfortunately this tragedy on the way home.”
Onlookers take in the fiery scene near the Roosevelt Mall. AP
The girl was a patient of Shriners Children’s Philadelphia, the hospital confirmed to NBC 10.
“Shriners Children’s is heartbroken to confirm that one of our pediatric patients and the child’s mother were aboard the Jet Rescue Air Ambulance that crashed in Philadelphia this evening,” the facility said in a statement.
“The patient had received care from Shriners Children’s Philadelphia and was being transported back to her home country in Mexico on a contracted air ambulance when the crash happened. Because of patient privacy concerns, we cannot say any more about the patient and her family at this time.”
Here is the latest on the Philadelphia medevac jet crash
The Learjet 55 caused a massive blast when it went down, with one eyewitness describing it as “Earthquakish” to WPVI.
“The sky lit up, and I pulled over and basically it was just real bad around it,” they said.
“It lit up the whole sky.”
The aircraft crashed in a residential neighborhood around three miles from the airport, setting several homes and cars ablaze, Philly Mayor Cherelle Parker said.
A spokesperson from the Federal Aviation Administration told The Post that the agency will investigate the tragic crash with the National Transportation Safety Board.