Brazil Plane Crash Cause? Supreme Court Judge Teori Zavascki Dies After Flight Reportedly Goes Down In Heavy Rain [VIDEO]

A Brazilian supreme court judge was among at least three people who died after a plane he was flying on crashed shortly after takeoff in the state of Rio de Janiero Thursday, according to multiple reports. Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Teori Zavascki's death was confirmed by his son, who announced it via social media.

After some confusion about who was on the plane, Francisco Prehn Zavascki wrote on his Facebook page that his father died, Reuters reported.

While the official cause of the plane crash was not immediately announced, Brazilian politics website plus55 reported that local residents said "it was pouring rain in the Paraty region," where the crash took place.

A video of recovery efforts by emergency personnel and other first responders was published to social media following the crash. The footage showed dozen of ships converging on an area of the body of water into which the fateful flight crashed.

Three bodies were recovered from the wreckage, including Zavascki's. The type of plane that crashed was a Hawker Beechcraft twin-prop plane, model C90GT, and could carry as many as seven passengers.

The flight took off from Sao Paolo at about 1 p.m. local time minutes before crashing a little more than an hour later off the coast of the town of Paraty, which was the flight's final destination, according to Reuters.

Zavascki was in charge of a political probe into a group of elected officials in Brazil who were accused of accepting billions of dollars in bribes. The politicians implicated in the investigation are merely dozens of hundreds of people who have already been charged. Dozens more have already been convicted.

Thursday's air catastrophe followed another Brazilian plane crash which killed all but three players on a Brazilian soccer team in November. That team, Chapecoense, was preparing to play its first game after the crash on Jan. 26, Telesur reported.