By Kelsey Durham
A Jamaica Estates man who owned a clothing store in the Bronx was killed Tuesday morning after a plane he was piloting crashed into the backyard of a home on Long Island.
Suffolk County police said Hanan Shoshany, 53, was the sole passenger on a single-engine private plane that crashed into the yard of a home at 51 Camille Lane in East Patchogue, L.I. just after 9 a.m. June 17, about 15 minutes after Shoshany had taken off from Republic Airport in East Farmingdale, L.I.
Shoshany was pronounced dead at the scene and no one on the ground was hurt in the crash, police said.
First responders said it appeared Shoshany made an attempt to land in between houses to avoid hurting anyone on the ground after realizing his engine was failing, according to a report in Newsday.
The Long Island-based paper also reported that Shoshany was heard telling an air traffic controller he was in distress shortly before the fiery crash occurred.
“I need your help sir,” he told the controller.
The Federal Aviation Administration said the plane, a Columbia Lancair LC 41, was headed to MacArthur Airport in Islip, L.I. The National Transportation Safety Board was handling the investigation and a spokesman from the agency said it could take up to 18 months to determine the cause of the crash.
Shoshany, a native of Israel, had lived in New York for close to 30 years and owned the Jeans Star clothing store in the Bronx.
Joey Eshun, the store’s manager who had worked for Shoshany for 22 years, described him as a hard worker whom his employees knew well.
“He was a good man, a very good man,” Eshun said. “We’ll miss him, believe me.”
Eshun said Shoshany liked to spend a lot of time with his wife and five children, according to family friend Yaron Cohen, and sometimes took vacations to his home country.
Cohen said Shoshany’s family flew Tuesday afternoon to Israel, where he will be buried.
Reach reporter Kelsey Durham at 718-260-4573 or by e-mail at kdurham@cnglocal.com.
