A staff member at Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas, was amongst those that died within the Bangor, Maine, airplane crash on Sunday.
In a press release emailed to The Christian Post on Wednesday, Lakewood Church confirmed that Shawna Collins was killed within the crash together with three other passengers and two flight crew members.
“We can confirm with great sadness that a beloved member of our church staff and treasured friend, Shawna Collins, was on the plane that crashed in Maine on Sunday evening,” stated the church.
“She was a lightweight that brightened our days, and he or she possessed a ravishing spirit that lifted everyone she met. We loved Shawna dearly, and we’ll miss her greater than words can express. We pray for her entire family and offer them our love and support during this difficult time.”
A church spokesperson also told CP that Collins “was traveling for private business outside of Lakewood.”
On Sunday, a Bombardier Challenger 600 private aircraft that was carrying six people crashed while taking off from Bangor International Airport around 7:45 p.m.
The plane was described by The Associated Press as “a wide-bodied business jet” that may have as much as 11 passengers and is thought to be a “popular charter option.”
The crash occurred because the East Coast was experiencing a winter storm, resulting in widespread flight cancellations and a number of other power outages.
Approximately 12,000 flights across several cities and multiple states were canceled on Sunday on account of the storm system, with an estimated 20,000 flights delayed, the AP reported.
Collins was a Houston-based event planner. Her daughter told ABC 13 in Houston that her mother was enthusiastic about a business trip to Europe.
At least three others confirmed to have died within the Sunday plane crash have been identified.
Forty-seven-year-old pilot Jacob Hosmer was a licensed flight instructor and the managing member of Platinum Skies Aviation LLC. Attorney Tara Arnold is the wife of Arnold & Itkin founding partner Kurt Arnold. Nick Mastrascusa, an executive at a luxury travel company owned by the Arnold family, was most recently identified as a crash victim by his family, based on a Wednesday update from KTRK.
The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating the accident. A preliminary report states that the plane “crashed under unknown circumstances on departure, got here to rest inverted and caught on fire.”
Bangor International Airport Director Jose Saavedra said during a press conference on Wednesday that weather conditions are impacting the investigation. He was questioned why the plane took off in the course of the snowstorm.
“There were planes landing and departing around that point and we had crews on site responding to the continued storm that we had,” Saavedra said, based on WMTW. “We have crews on site that reply to storms and we prepare for this regularly. This is normal for us, to cope with weather events, and we had crews on site to handle the weather event that we had ongoing.”
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