{"id":42574,"date":"2025-11-11T16:11:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-11T16:11:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/42574\/"},"modified":"2025-11-11T16:11:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-11T16:11:11","slug":"christian-missionary-father-and-daughter-killed-in-south-florida-plane-crash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/42574\/","title":{"rendered":"Christian missionary father and daughter killed in South Florida plane crash"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Christian missionary father and his daughter were killed when a small plane bound for a hurricane relief mission in Jamaica crashed in a South Florida neighborhood<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Christian ministry organization Ignite the Fire identified the two victims of the Monday morning crash as the group\u2019s founder, Alexander Wurm, 53, and his daughter Serena Wurm, 22.<\/p>\n

The pair were bringing humanitarian aid to Jamaica, according to the organization, when the Beechcraft King Air plane they were flying in crashed into a pond in a residential area of the Fort Lauderdale suburb of Coral Springs, narrowly missing homes. As of Tuesday morning, investigators had not reported any other victims.<\/p>\n

Ignite the Fire is \u201cdedicated to empowering youth through missions and evangelism across the Caribbean,\u201d according to the organization\u2019s website. A statement on the group\u2019s social media described the Wurm family as passionate about humanitarian work and their Christian faith.<\/p>\n

\u201cTogether, their final journey embodied selflessness and courage, reminding us of the power of service and love,\u201d the statement reads, adding, \u201cRest in peace, Alexander and Serena \u2014 your light endures in all whose lives you changed.\u201d<\/p>\n

The turboprop plane went down shortly after taking off from Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport at approximately 10:14 a.m. on Monday, authorities said, with police and fire rescue responding to the crash site just five minutes later.<\/p>\n

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According to Federal Aviation Administration records, the plane was manufactured in 1976 and its registered owner is listed as International Air Services, a company that markets itself as specializing in providing trust agreements to non-U.S. citizens that enable them to register their aircraft with the FAA. A person who answered the company\u2019s phone Monday afternoon declined to answer questions from a reporter, stating \u201cno comment\u201d and ending the phone call.<\/p>\n

Posts by Alexander Wurm on social media in recent days suggested the evangelist had recently acquired the plane to further his missionary work across the Caribbean, describing the aircraft as \u201can older King Air with brand new engines,\u201d and \u201cperfect\u201d to ferry his organization\u2019s deliveries of generators, batteries and building materials to Jamaica.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been a pilot since 2005 and I felt that the Ignite ministry should have a missions airplane if it wanted to effectively bless the Caribbean!\u201d Wurm wrote in a social media post on Nov. 2.<\/p>\n

\u201cPerfect for the mission to bring relief goods into Montego Bay and the plane is ready just in time!\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Photos and videos on social media show Wurm posing for a picture in the plane\u2019s cockpit and unloading boxes of supplies from the packed aircraft with teams of volunteers.<\/p>\n

The flight tracking website FlightAware shows the plane made four other trips to or from Jamaica in the past week, traveling between George Town in the Cayman Islands and Montego Bay and Negril in Jamaica, before landing in Fort Lauderdale on Friday.<\/p>\n

Broward County, where the plane took off from and where the crash occurred, is home to a vibrant Caribbean American community that sprang into action<\/a> to collect relief supplies following Hurricane Melissa, which left a path of destruction in the Caribbean.<\/p>\n

A powerful Category 5 storm, Hurricane Melissa made landfall in Jamaica on Oct. 28 and tied for the strongest landfalling Atlantic hurricane<\/a> in history. The storm also caused devastation in Cuba, Haiti and the Dominican Republic and prompted relief organizations<\/a> to mobilize.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Kate Payne is a corps member for The Associated Press\/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America<\/a> is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Christian missionary father and his daughter were killed when a small plane bound for a hurricane relief…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":42135,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28074,20368,3758,7811,624,1882,28,30,29,477,12864,944,21427,12146,1137,3446,27433,1739,28075,1798,1110],"class_list":["post-42574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-alexander-wurm","tag-central-america","tag-christianity","tag-federal-aviation-administration","tag-fires","tag-fl-state-wire","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-general-news","tag-hurricane-melissa","tag-hurricanes","tag-hurricanes-and-typhoons","tag-jamaica","tag-kate-payne","tag-latin-america","tag-plane-crashes","tag-religion","tag-serena-wurm","tag-transportation","tag-u-s-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42574"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42574\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}