Nine people died Sunday when a private Learjet 60 bound for the Bahamas plunged out of the sky and slammed into a residential neighborhood in Greenacres, Florida, authorities said, leaving a smoking crater feet from homes and forcing the evacuation of hundreds of nearby residents.

The business jet had departed Austin-Bergstrom International Airport in Texas and was cruising at 35,000 feet when its pilots radioed air traffic control to report icing, turbulence and precipitation, and asked to climb an additional 2,000 feet, U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said. Moments later, flight-tracking data showed the aircraft entering a near-vertical dive, descending at rates of up to 30,000 feet per minute, before banking sharply and crashing around 12:50 p.m.

All nine people aboard were killed, Duffy confirmed. Their identities had not been released as of Monday morning. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said there were no immediate reports of anyone on the ground being hurt, despite the jet coming down just feet from houses and inches from a busy roadway, according to Al Jazeera's report on the crash.

"It was a cataclysmic plane crash," DeSantis told reporters at the scene. "It looked like a missile going down and left a big crater on the side of the road."

Witness video showed the aircraft erupting into a fireball on impact, sending thick black smoke over the neighborhood. Palm Beach County officials evacuated roughly 600 residents from a nearby mobile home community as a precaution, and the road leading to the crash site remained closed into Monday, France 24 reported.

Mayday moments before impact

Audio captured by the flight-tracking service LiveATC.net recorded the pilots issuing urgent mayday calls as the plane lost altitude, with one crew member heard saying, "We're going to crash into the ground." Investigators have not determined what triggered the dive, though both icing and turbulence reported by the crew in the minutes before the crash are among the factors under scrutiny.

The National Transportation Safety Board is leading the investigation, with support from the Federal Aviation Administration. "A horrific tragedy," Duffy said in a statement, adding that FAA personnel were headed to the site. Austin-Bergstrom airport officials confirmed the jet was privately operated but said they could not yet say who was aboard.

The crash happened as heavy rain moved through South Florida, with the National Weather Service maintaining a flood watch for the region into Monday afternoon. Investigators are expected to examine the jet's maintenance history, the crew's weather briefings and whether the aircraft's descent rate exceeded its structural limits, a detail flight-tracking analysts flagged as unusual even for a weather-related upset.

Learjet 60s, built by Bombardier, have been in service since the early 1990s and are commonly used for private and charter flights. The NTSB has not said how long the investigation is expected to take, though preliminary findings in major crash probes are typically released within weeks.