The MIT graduates killed in a private plane crash in upstate New York over the weekend had been planning to get engaged this summer, the man’s grief-stricken father has revealed.
James Sontoro and his longtime girlfriend Karenna Groff had been talking about tying the knot in the months leading up to Saturday’s tragic wreck in Copake near the Massachusetts border.
“They were planning to get married and they were planning to get engaged in the summer,” Sontoro’s dad, John Santoro, told Boston 25 News.
James Sontoro and his longtime girlfriend Karenna Groff had been talking about tying the knot in the months leading up to Saturday’s tragic wreck in Copake in upstate New York, his dad said. APThe grieving father said the two families had shared their excitement over the upcoming proposal during the Christmas holiday period.
The young couple were among the six people killed when the twin-engine Mitsubishi MU-2B they were on went down in a muddy field as they headed to the Catskills for a birthday celebration and the Passover holiday.
Karenna’s neuroscientist father Michael Groff, urologist mother Joy Saini, her paralegal brother Jared Groff and her brother’s partner, partner Alexia Couyutas Duarte, also died.
The couple, who met as freshmen at MIT, had only just relocated to Manhattan, according to Santoro’s dad.
Karenna’s neuroscientist father Michael Groff and her urologist mother Joy Saini were also killed in the wreck. APKarenna, a former college soccer player who was named the 2022 NCAA woman of the year, had enrolled in medical school at New York University.
Her boyfriend, a lacrosse-playing New Jersey native, had taken up a job as an investment associate for Silver Point, a hedge fund based in Greenwich, Connecticut, his father said.
“They were a wonderful family,” Santoro said in a statement shortly after the tragedy unfolded. “The world lost a lot of very good people who were going to do a lot of good for the world if they had the opportunity. We’re all personally devastated.”
“The 25 years we had with James were the best years of our lives,” he continued. “The joy and love he brought us will be enough to last a lifetime.”
Karenna, a former college soccer player who was named the 2022 NCAA woman of the year, had enrolled in medical school at New York University. @karennagroff/TikTokSantoro, in an interview with the local TV outlet, described Karenna as a “fantastic person.”
“I think after you met her parents, it became pretty clear where she got it from,” he said.
The tragedy unfolded after the family had set off on Dr. Groff’s jet from a White Plains airport Saturday morning.
The plane had flown for less than an hour before, with no issues found, National Transportation Safety Board member Todd Inman told reporters Monday.
Groff, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School and experienced pilot, had been due to land the plane at the Columbia County Airport around noon.
He alerted air traffic controllers that they’d missed their approach and were requesting directions for a second attempt when the tower indicated a “low altitude alert” and suddenly lost contact.
Within moments, the small plane went down in the field.
Investigators obtained footage of the final seconds of the flight, which “appears to show that the aircraft was intact and crashed at a high rate of descent into the ground,” Inman said.
Investigators obtained footage of the final seconds of the flight, which “appears to show that the aircraft was intact and crashed at a high rate of descent into the ground,” NTSB official Todd Inman told reporters during a briefing on Sunday.
Groff was flying under instrument flight rules — which are used in poor visibility conditions, as opposed to visual flight rules — but it was too soon to say if reduced visibility from weather conditions was to blame for the wreck, he said.
Albert Nixon, the NTSB’s lead investigator for the case, said the agency is working with the National Weather Service to identify the full weather conditions near the airport that day.
Inman also noted that because the Mitsubishi MU-2B is a particularly powerful plane, which can reach near jet speeds, it requires additional training to be flown.
Groff, however, did complete the special training and received his certificate in October 2024, according to the NTSB.
Investigators expect to be at the crash site for about a week and a full accident report could take between 12 and 24 months to complete, according to Inman.
The full wreckage recovery is set to be completed by Tuesday evening, with the aircraft set to arrive at an NTSB base in Massachusetts.
Given the plane’s Japanese origins, Inman said the Japanese Safety Board has also been called to help investigate the crash.
With Post wires
