Brazilian Club Loses Four Players, Team President In Plane Crash

Brazilian football club Palmas suffered a horrific tragedy on Sunday as four players and its president were killed as the plane they were traveling in crashed in the northern state of Tocantins.

The accident occurred when the plane suddenly plunged to the ground at the end of the runway while on takeoff, the Brazilian fourth-division club confirmed.

“At this time of pain and dismay, the club asks for prayers for family members, who will be given the proper support," the team representative said, as quoted on Brazilian publication IOL.

They were on their way to Goiania, the central region of the country to play a match against Vila Nova. Brazilian media reports suggested that the four players were traveling separately as they had previously tested positive for COVID-19 and Sunday was their last day of isolation.

Meanwhile, the rest of the team were en route on a commercial flight.

The victims were identified as president Lucas Meira and players Lucas Praxedes, Guilherme Noé, Ranule and Marcus Molinari, as well as the pilot. There were no survivors, the club reported.

The Brazilian Football Confederation expressed its solidarity with the club and the families of the deceased. The governing body mandated a minute of silence in all fixtures last Sunday as a sign of mourning.

Chapecoense was quick to convey its sympathies to Palmas after the club suffered a similar fate in 2016. A plane carrying 19 of the aforementioned team’s players en route to Colombia for the club’s first-ever South American tournament final went down after it ran out of fuel near Medellin.

“Unfortunately, we know what this moment of pain is like and we wish that no other group had to feel the same,” Chapecoense said in a statement, as quoted by the New York Post. “You won’t go through this alone.”