A plane that crashed minutes after takeoff into a lake in Coral Springs, killing two people last month, was laden with unweighed and unsecured equipment and supplies for Hurricane Melissa relief in Jamaica, investigators said Wednesday.
A local church group helped pilot Alexander Wurm, 53, founder of an evangelical Christian ministry that conducts missions across the Caribbean, load the 1976 Beech B100 aircraft with a generator, boxes of tarps, electric tools, screws and flashlights at Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport. The pilot told the helpers he could carry up to 1,000 pounds of cargo, a newly released preliminary National Transportation Safety Board report.
The exact amount of cargo loaded onto the plane was not weighed, according to the NTSB report. Some had been left behind and was supposed to be taken to Jamaica on another flight.
“The cargo was not weighed; however, the pilot checked the weight documented on each box as the airplane was loaded, and he finished the loading process once he determined that capacity had been reached,” the report said.
The plane was filled to capacity once 282 gallons of Jet-A fuel were added, the report said, and the cargo had been unsecured throughout the cabin on passenger seats.
Wurm and his daughter Serena, 22, were killed when the plane came plunging out of the sky and smashed into a lake in the Windsor Bay gated community shortly after 10 a.m. Nov. 10.
It crashed into the water in a steep, nose-down dive, the NTSB report said. On impact, the plane was ripped into pieces. The largest part to be recovered was the tail with its stabilizer and rudder assembly still attached.
After takeoff, Wurm reached a top height of 4,000 feet above mean sea level, and air traffic control personnel instructed him to make a right turn at a certain angle. He acknowledged the instruction and communicated with them on the next instruction, the NTSB report showed.
By the time Wurm had made the instructed turn, he was traveling at about 230 miles per hour and had begun descending, the report said. Seconds later, a controller gave the pilot another instruction and there was no response as the plane continued descending.
The controller again tried to communicate with the pilot, but only “heavy breathing and ‘grunting’ sounds” were heard, according to the report. The plane had dropped to about 1,500 feet and was traveling at more than 300 mph.
“The airplane was not trailing smoke or vapors in any of the recordings, all of which captured the sound of engines operating,” the report said, citing security cameras that recorded the final seconds of flight.
A cold front was over the region at the time, and satellite imagery reviewed by the NTSB showed the plane entered a band of clouds associated with the front after takeoff and remained in them during its turn to the east until it started to drop, the report said.
The pilot bought the airplane in February 2024 and completely refitted the interior and upgraded its electronics systems in June 2025, the report said.
In the days after Wurm’s death, the Cayman International Assembly of God Church in Camana Bay in the Cayman Islands held a service in honor of him and Serena, showed a livestream shared on Wurm’s ministry’s Facebook page. They played a video that Wurm had earlier requested his ministry put together, after his first relief trip to Jamaica, according to a leader who spoke at the service.
In one clip, the video showed Wurm sitting in the pilot seat of the plane describing the supplies he had brought for Montego Bay, including generators, solar panels, battery packs, hardware and tarps. He said he was hoping to travel back and forth with more supplies to help.
The plane had been scheduled to return to Fort Lauderdale on the day of the crash.
NTSB preliminary reports do not provide information about the probable cause of crashes. Probable causes are included in final investigation reports, which can take between 12 and 24 months.