Bermuda police name the mother and son on the medical jet lost off Nantucket

Bermuda police on Monday named the two passengers on the medical jet that vanished off Nantucket early Saturday. They are Marilyn Lavonne Bean, 66, and her son Sergio Wayne Lottimore, 41, both Bermudian. The US Coast Guard had already suspended the search on Sunday evening. Latitude Air Ambulance, the Canadian operator, said the six people on board are presumed dead.

The aircraft was a Gulfstream G100, call sign Heartbeat 104, flown by Latitude Air Ambulance of Hamilton, Ontario. It left L.F. Wade International Airport in Bermuda for Boston Logan. The Federal Aviation Administration put out a search-and-rescue alert at about 1:20 a.m. The Coast Guard Northeast District said contact was lost early Saturday. FlightAware data showed the jet at 24,000 feet for more than an hour, then a drop of about 13,000 feet in roughly two minutes. Radio traffic caught the crew reporting electrical failures as the aircraft neared Nantucket. There was no further reply. The jet left radar around 1 a.m.

Searchers found debris about 20 miles off Nantucket, an island about 30 miles south of Cape Cod. They did not find the six people. The Coast Guard said four of those on board were Canadian and two were Bermudian, a split that matches four crew from Latitude and the two passengers named on Monday. Matthew Lake, the Northeast district commander, said suspending a search is not an easy decision. Next of kin had been notified before the names were released.

Latitude's statement, issued after the search ended, said the four members of its team, the patient, and the patient's family escort aboard Heartbeat 104 are presumed to have died. The company called that the heartbreaking reality given what authorities had shared. It has owned the aircraft since 2018, agency records show. Officials have said one person was the patient and one was a family escort. They have not said whether Bean or Lottimore was the patient. Superintendent Arthur Glasford of the Bermuda Police Service said officers are meeting the families daily and passing on what American authorities send.

The National Transportation Safety Board said on Monday that the right investigative jurisdiction is still being decided. That sentence is the procedural fact under the names. A flight that starts in Bermuda, is run by a Canadian company, and disappears in US search waters does not land in one agency's file by default. Until jurisdiction is set, the recorder, if it is found, has no agreed reader. The Coast Guard's job was rescue. That phase is over. The next phase is wreckage, maintenance records, and the electrical failure the crew reported before the radio went quiet.

The drop itself is the sharpest public number. From 24,000 feet to about 11,000 feet in two minutes is not a normal descent toward Boston. It matches the shape of a loss of control or a deliberate emergency descent that was not recovered. Electrical failure can take radios, instruments, and some flight controls offline together, depending on the bus that fails. The NTSB, or whichever board is given the case, will need the wreckage before that sequence can be ordered. Debris 20 miles south of Nantucket fixes a search box. It does not yet fix a cause.

Bean and Lottimore were identified by Bermuda police, not by the airline's first statement, which spoke only of a patient and an escort. The delay is ordinary in a cross-border crash. It also leaves a private fact public without a medical one: a mother and son were on the aeroplane, and one of them was being flown for care. Which one is still unstated.

The open question is jurisdiction and the recorder. If the NTSB takes the lead, the electrical-failure call becomes the start of a US docket. If another state takes it, families in Bermuda and crew families in Canada will be reading a different board's updates. Either way, the search for survivors is finished.