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6 People Killed in North Carolina Private Jet Crash; Police Looking into Potential Ties Between Brown University Shooting and Killing of MIT Professor; Defense Bill Passes Without IVF Coverage for Military Families. Aired 2:30-3p ET

Aired December 18, 2025 - 14:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[14:30:00]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: ... of digging up ground. CNN's Pete Muntean has been following all of the developments. Pete, what more do you know about what happened and who was on the flight?

PETE MUNTEAN, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: Well, investigators, of course, will be looking at all of this video as they try to piece this together. And we're getting some new information now from sources who have been briefed on this, telling us that six people were on board this Cessna Citation jet, a pilot and five others on board. This is the video of the immediate aftermath of the crash, that Cessna jet on the runway there at the Statesville Regional Airport, 40 miles north of Charlotte, the epicenter of NASCAR in the United States.

And we now know, according to a source familiar, that somebody associated with NASCAR was on board this plane at the time of the crash. I want to show you the new flight path information, which tells a story that this plane was essentially doomed from the start.

Took off about 10:06 Eastern Standard Time. To the east you can see the left turn there at the top of the screen. This plane headed southwest bound, had a flight plan filed for Sarasota Bradenton International Airport on the Gulf Coast of Florida.

Then there was a quick climb to 4,000 feet, a little bit unstable. Here is what this would be called. So the plane climbed to 4,000 feet, then down to about 2,000 feet, entered what's called the downwind leg parallel to the runway there in the airport, what's sort of near the top right corner and then turned left to line up with the runway.

It appears at least from the video we have seen, this plane initially impacted the ground short of the runway, went through an airport perimeter road, then the fence, then the wreckage there on the runway. A very sad state of affairs here. So many people wondering who was on board at the time of this crash.

NASCAR is a small and tight knit community hit time and again by fatal plane crashes. Dale Earnhardt Jr. escaped with his life from a plane crash involving a Cessna Citation jet back in 2019. Hendrick Motorsports hit hard by a crash, 10 killed in a crash in 2004 that involved a Beechcraft King Air. And then the husband of NASCAR executive Lisa France Kennedy was killed in a plane crash back in 2007 involving a twin engine Cessna 310. So this is a world that is not unfamiliar to the perils of small general aviation crashes. This airplane, not necessarily unsafe, does have a bit of a spotty history.

These citation jets can be picked up, especially an older one like this, 44 years old, can be picked up for a relatively insignificant amount of money when it comes to the scheme of private jets that can really run the gamut. But they age and they become expensive to maintain. So, of course, the National Transportation Safety Board will be looking deeply into the maintenance records of this plane.

And, of course, the weather at the time of this crash. And you can see the conditions there were a little bit marginal, low clouds, low visibility. There was some rain moving through the area at the time.

And you can see the outpouring of law enforcement and first responders there that tried to put out what appears to be a fiery crash there at the Statesville Airport in Iredell County, North Carolina.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: When it comes to this airport, Pete, talk to us about the fact that it doesn't have a control tower. It's a regional airport, doesn't have anybody sort of monitoring the sky.

MUNTEAN: It's known as an uncontrolled field and it's just not busy enough to necessitate a tower. It's sort of like the difference between a stoplight and a four way stop. So pilots essentially self- announce and self-report their positions on a common radio frequency that is published.

Probably did not play into this. It's making it hard right now, though, for us to find air traffic control audio. Usually, if you're leaving, going into bad weather, if you file a flight plan like this, you'd contact an air traffic control facility pretty quickly after leaving.

It doesn't seem like that audio was captured here. Of course, air traffic control audio is very, very telling, at least in the preliminary stages of an investigation like this. And also National Transportation Safety Board investigators have launched a go team.

They'll arrive there pretty soon. We'll want to know if there was a cockpit voice recorder on board. That is also very telling.

And they can get a lot of information from from that audio captured on board the plane. Sometimes these airplanes have them. Sometimes they do not.

So it still sort of remains to be seen what information investigators will be able to glean, at least in the early phases of this investigation.

KEILAR: And again, we are watching these pictures from not too long ago. Six people killed in North Carolina in a private jet crash. And a federal source with knowledge of the crash telling CNN a person associated with NASCAR was on board the plane that crashed.

Let's get some expert analysis now from CNN aviation analyst Peter Goetz. He's a former managing director of the National Transportation Safety Board. Peter, you see these images.

What are you -- you know, what is it bringing up for you in terms of what may have happened here?

[14:35:00]

PETER GOETZ, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, as Pete mentioned, Statesville is one of the two really centers of NASCAR aviation. The other is Concord, North Carolina.

And there have been a series of accidents over the years there. So this is a community that is really familiar with with this kind of tragedy. What jumps out at you is, I mean, that's a tremendous fire.

The plane was obviously loaded with fuel for a long day of flying. And what I understand is the NTSB is going to be sending a full investigative team to investigate, to look at this accident led by Michael Graham, who was prior to his service on the board, was a F-18, F-87 pilot, but was also the chief safety person for Textron, which manufactured Cessna's. So they're sending the very best board member that can to the scene of this accident.

And it reflects how important they're taking it.

SANCHEZ: Pete Muntean mentioned a moment ago that this specific type of Cessna C-550 has had a spotty record, not necessarily because of the safety of the crash craft itself, but rather because it's a very common craft that's used. And I wonder what you make of that assessment and also what you think may have contributed to this crash.

GOETZ: Well, I mean, Pete's right. There's over 8,000 Cessna, you know, Cessna Citations in the air. It is a very popular small to -- small, midsize jet.

It is a forgiving plane, easy to fly, pilots tell me. And that it's had accidents, I think, because it's deceptive. It is an easy plane to crash -- easy plane to fly, which makes it perhaps an easy plane to crash as well.

I mean, this is an important review that's going to take place because these planes are everywhere and they're very popular in terms of charters and private ownership.

SANCHEZ: Peter Goetz, thank you so much for sharing your expertise. We appreciate your time.

GOETZ: Thank you.

SANCHEZ: Still ahead, we have new details in that shooting at Brown University. Police are looking into potential ties to a separate shooting at MIT that killed a professor. The details next.

[14:40:00]

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SANCHEZ: We've got some more breaking news in the CNN. A law enforcement official close to the case of the Brown University shooting now says the police are looking into potential ties between that attack and the killing of an MIT professor at his home near Boston. Nuno Loureiro was shot Monday night, two days after a gunman killed two people and injured nine others at Brown University.

KEILAR: At this point, police have not named a suspect, but they are seeking information about a person of interest seen pacing around campus in the hours before the attack and anyone who may have come into contact with them.

We're joined now by CNN chief law enforcement and intelligence analyst John Miller. John, how does this potential of the two crimes being connected change the investigation?

JOHN MILLER, CNN CHIEF LAW ENFORCEMENT AND INTELLIGENCE ANALYST: Well, it certainly widens the scope from perhaps an isolated incident happening, you know, on the Brown University campus to a person who has potential multiple agendas in terms of, you know, these two acts of violence, the second of which occurred Monday night in Brookline, just outside of Boston's. It would mean that if it was the same person connected that he would have had to travel the not terribly far distance from Providence to Boston, do a separate reconnaissance for a separate crime and strike it. But not to get ahead of ourselves here, there is a thread of information that joins the two cases because of a certain similarity.

And I want to be very cautious here because we have seen before in other cases where there can be this common thread, a connection that appears to join two cases that when you play that out, it may turn out that that is not the case. But when investigators were asked this question at the press conference just a couple of days ago, I guess on Tuesday, Ted Docks, the special agent in charge of the Boston office who is leading the FBI effort to assist in both of these cases, said that he had spoken to Geoff Noble, the colonel, the superintendent of the Massachusetts State Police, and their assessment was there was no connection.

So the information that has that similar thread that brings the two cases together has really come up within the last 24 hours. But it's still only a possibility as we watch it develop.

SANCHEZ: Do you see this as adding extra urgency to try to find the shooter and get them off the street?

MILLER: Well, it certainly begs this question that we have been struggling with, Boris, which is from the very beginning. Once they determined that this person had fled the scene of the Brown shooting and was still out there. Remember, there was a person of interest.

They were told to breathe a sigh of relief. That person was eliminated, vindicated, exonerated, as you would. [14:45:00]

And and then that that question came back. So if the shooter is still out there, are there other targets? If he has gone from one target to another, that is going to raise concern that there could be even more. But again, I want to caution this is an angle they're investigating.

It is not certain that the two cases are connected, but there is this connective tissue that they want to get through and say, could that be a connection that joins these two investigations together?

KEILAR: Yes, because Brookline, John, where this professor was shot, is almost 50 miles away from Brown. So how do investigators kind of approach that? Is there looking around such a vast area for potential clues?

MILLER: You know, that's an easy one, but only because of the structure of the law enforcement network up there. So the Boston office of the FBI covers, obviously, Boston. But its region also covers Providence, where they have satellite offices that are called R.A. or resident agencies.

So what you get is you've got the Providence Police Department and the Brookline Police Department working their cases in chief separately. But the FBI is able to run leads between both of those cities and coordinate the information flow that keeps all of those things aligned in the database of leads where they can quickly compare things and find those connections if they're there. So in this case, the system is actually designed to to keep them well coordinated.

KEILAR: All right, John, very interesting insights there. John Miller, thank you.

And next, we have brand new information about that deadly plane crash in North Carolina where multiple people have been killed.

[14:50:00]

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KEILAR: President Trump campaigned on lower costs for fertility treatment and expanding access to IVF and signed an executive order that promised just that. But when President Trump signs the massive bill that authorizes the funding of the Defense Department tonight, military families who had been counting on finally getting IVF coverage in their government provided health insurance will be left high and dry. Both the House and Senate approved IVF coverage for military families, but the provision was stripped out of the bill last minute.

And Democratic Senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, a combat veteran who relied on fertility treatments to create her family, is criticizing Speaker Mike Johnson for removing it. CNN has reached out to Speaker Johnson's office for comment on that criticism.

I'm joined now by the community support director for the Building Military Families Network, Courtney Deady. She is a National Guard spouse joining us now from Ohio. Courtney, thank you so much for taking time for us today. What does this mean for military families like yours that this is not in this bill?

COURTNEY DEADY, COMMUNITY SUPPORT DIRECTOR, BUILDING MILITARY FAMILIES NETWORK: Well, thank you so much for having me. So what this means to our military community is it gives us a sense of the fact that a lot of our hopes and dreams are kind of in limbo. We don't know where the next financial loan, the money, is going to come from when it comes to coverage and missing out on a lot of financial aid for our family building community.

It honestly feels, for lack of better terms, more of a slap in the face to a lot of our community when our Congress is receiving a lot of those benefits that we so desperately would love to have on our end.

KEILAR: Yes, this bill would have brought you sort of commensurate with what federal workers or members of Congress, congressional staffers get. Can you talk specifically, because I think it's really interesting, and I think people will benefit from knowing about your personal IVF journey and how IVF coverage not being provided affects you and your family and your journey trying to create a family.

DEADY: Yes, so my husband and I, we have -- we have been going through this journey since 2015, so we've been on the long track of infertility for 10 years now. And in that time frame, we have spent a little over $100,000 alone when it comes to coverage for our testing, for treatments, but it goes beyond that even. You know, not just the treatments, it's the mental health, it's the travel, it's the -- there's so many other things such as cryopreservation when all of our families have really thought logically and we've prayed about it or we've done the research to figure out what ethic -- you know, ethically this journey looks like for us.

And to not have that, it goes to show that there's a very lack of education when it comes to this realm of reproductive medicine.

KEILAR: And your $100,000 over the course of a decade, we should mention, I think it's also important for people to know, military spouses face unemployment at four to five times the national rate due to the constant moves of the lifestyle. So what does it mean to have those kinds of costs out of pocket? I mean, how does a military family afford that?

[14:55:00]

DEADY: A lot of times individuals, either they give up on their hopes and dreams or they are taking out specific loans, personal loans with high interest rates. So not only are you taking into account of the loan itself, but the interest rates to have those. But a lot of the time it is, it's very, it's very, it's a very taxing time for individuals when we're trying to figure out what we need to do and how we need to do it on --

KEILAR: Courtney, I am so sorry we have lost your signal, unfortunately, but I hear you saying it. You're talking about giving up on your hopes and dreams. And obviously, in your family, one of that is serving the country.

But also for you, that's a dream of having a family. And you're obviously working very hard to do that. Courtney Deady, thank you so much for speaking out about your situation and that of other military families.

We have much more on our two breaking news stories that we are following. We have a plane crash that we're following in North Carolina. And also new details in the investigation into the Brown University shooting.

Stay with us. We have more CNN NEWS CENTRAL after the break.

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