Hours after performing for thousands of South Carolina college students, former Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker and celebrity disc jockey DJ AM were critically injured in a fiery Learjet crash that killed four people, authorities said on Saturday.
Officials said the plane carrying six people was departing shortly before midnight on Friday when air traffic controllers reported seeing sparks.
The plane hurtled off the end of a runway and crashed through antennas and a fence. It came to rest 400m away on an embankment across a five-lane highway and was engulfed in flames, said Debbie Hersman, a member of the National Transportation Safety Board.
Barker and DJ AM, whose real name is Adam Goldstein, were in critical but stable condition at a burn center in Augusta, Georgia, on Saturday afternoon, hospital spokeswoman Beth Frits said. Augusta is about 120km southwest of Columbia.
Two other passengers — Chris Baker, 29, and Charles Still, 25 — died, as did pilot Sarah Lemmon, 31, and co-pilot James Bland, 52, the county coroner said. Baker was an assistant to Barker and Still was a security guard for the musician.
The plane was headed for Van Nuys, California. It is owned by Global Exec Aviation, a California-based charter company, and was certified to operate last year, Hersman said. The company expressed its condolences in a statement and said it was working with investigators to determine the cause of the crash.
At the crash site on Saturday, the air was still heavy with the odor of jet fuel. A trail of black soot led off a runway. The nose of the aircraft was gone and the roof was missing from two-thirds of the charred plane.
Hersman said officials recovered the cockpit voice recorder on Saturday but had yet to analyze it or determine whether the recording was in good condition. She said the weather was clear when the plane took off, but said no factors had been ruled out.
Barker and Goldstein had performed together under the name TRVSDJ-AM at a free concert in Columbia on Friday night. Event sponsor T-Mobile said their hourlong set ended at about 7:15pm.
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