Jenni Rivera, the 43-year-old Mexican-American singer, had
her life cut short on Sunday, December 9th, when her plane crashed.
Rivera was travelling over mountains in northern Mexico when the small plane
went down in Iturbide. The cause of the crash has not yet been determined.
Known as “La Diva de la Banda,” (The Diva of Banda Music),
Jenni Rivera was a powerful performer whose music focused on Mexican corridos
(ballads). She is reminiscent of Selena, who also began her career as a
Mexican-American diva, later working her way into American mainstream. Rivera
had just begun working on breaking into the U.S. scene.
According to police on the scene, “The aircraft was
destroyed, totally fragmented.” All seven people on board are presumed to have
been killed in the crash, including Rivera’s publicist, attorney, and makeup
artists. However, no bodies have yet been identified. Rivera’s family is
waiting for the results of a DNA test performed on Tuesday, which could take
days.
“We still have hope that she’s alive,” her
brother Pedro Rivera Jr. said. “It’s a 95% chance that she’s dead but we
have that belief because we don’t have a body. They found clothes.”
The
plane fell from an altitude of about 28,000 feet and may have hit the ground at
over 600 mph. Wreckage was so shattered and spread out that it has proven
difficult to find the crash site. The crash could have been due to a major
failure of flight controls, or it could have been human error.
Small jets like the Learjet Rivera was flying in take very
skilled pilots to fly, and the accident rate is more than double of that for
other small aircraft. There was no emergency call from the plane before it went
down; the plane was reported missing just ten minutes after takeoff.
Jenni Rivera’s father, unlike other members of her family, does
not believe she survived the crash. “My queen, we will see each other soon,”
he said. “We though it was press speculation, we wanted to believe that. But
it’s true, my daughter is dead.”
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