A light aircraft piloted by Romanian billionaire Dan Petrescu crashed into an empty office building near Milan on Sunday and killed him, his wife and their son, and the other five people on board, Italian media reported.
The single-engine Pilatus PC-12 took off from Milan’s Linate airport shortly after 1pm (1100 GMT) for Olbia in the north of the Italian island of Sardinia.
It crashed just minutes later in San Donato Milanese, a city southeast of Milan, according to the ANSV aviation agency, which opened an investigation.
Witnesses said the plane was already on fire before it crashed into an office building that was undergoing renovations.
Petrescu, 68, was one of the richest men in Romania. He ran a major construction company and owned a series of hypermarkets and malls. He also had German nationality, the Corriere della Sera newspaper reported.
Corriere and the AGI news agency said Petrescu’s 65-year-old wife, who also had French nationality, and their 30-year-old son Dan Stefano were killed, as well as a child.
The mayor of Milan Beppe Sala and his counterpart in San Donato, Andrea Checchi, went to the scene.
Deputy prosecutor Tiziana Siciliano was quoted by Corriere as saying the plane’s black box was recovered.
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