PHOTOS: Queens plane crash kills one, search continues

Police have located debris and a body after a small plane went down in the waters off Breezy Point, Queens, Wednesday night.

A call at 7:50 p.m. reporting a flash in the sky over Breezy Point led to the recovery of small plane that had gone down offshore near the Rockaway Peninsula, police sources told CBS New York, which added that the Police Harbor Unit recovered debris believed to be a wheel, a tail and part of a wing about 1 1/2 miles offshore.

Police also claimed to find a body around 11:15 p.m. in the wreckage, CBS reported, though the body has not been identified, and it is not certain how many people were on the plane or what caused it to crash.

In a related report, the New York Daily News claimed that personal items were recovered about a mile off Breezy Point’s 216th Street beach, adding that a police source stated, “We found a man, and we’ve recovered what appears to be female luggage, but so far no other signs of a woman.”

“It was like [the pilot] was joyriding,” the Daily News quoted John Norton, 44, a plumber who was sitting on the beach at the time of the crash. “His flight path was just way too low. It didn’t make any sense.”

The plane left Philadelphia around 7:30 p.m. and was cruising around 1,000 feet before plummeting into the ocean, according to Flightradar24.com data referenced by the Daily News, which added that the tail number of the plane corresponds to an aircraft registered to a James McGee of Rye, N.H.

“We are sending someone up to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where the plane was headed, to see if we can get a positive ID,” a police source said in the Daily News report.

CBS reported that the search effort was suspended until Thursday morning due to lack of light, and the FAA has opened an investigation into the crash.

Check back here for further updates.