Transportation secretary says 'expansive' impact zone was left by Philadelphia medical plane crash

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — The impact area where a medical transportation plane crashed in Philadelphia was notably “expansive,” U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Monday after viewing the site with investigators and city officials.

Duffy said he was struck by “how expansive it was. And the issues that fire and police were dealing with. Again, this is a very populated area.”

The crash Friday evening killed all six people on the Learjet 55 air ambulance, including a girl who had been receiving medical treatment at Shriners Children’s Philadelphia hospital. A seventh person inside a vehicle was killed on the ground.

Mayor Cherelle Parker said two more people who were hurt on the ground have been identified, bringing the total to 24. Four people remained hospitalized Monday, two in critical condition.

Parker said footage of the crash has made her “think about what could have been, had a gas line been hit.”

Jet Rescue Air Ambulance said the plane had been taking Valentina Guzmán Murillo, 11, and her mother, Lizeth Murillo Osuna, 31, home to Mexico. It plummeted within a minute of taking off from Northeast Philadelphia Airport. Jet Rescue identified its team members as Dr. Raul Meza Arredondo, 41; the captain, Alan Montoya Perales, 46; the copilot, Josue de Jesus Juarez Juarez, 43; and paramedic Rodrigo Lopez Padilla, 41.

Valentina had recently completed treatment for a condition not easily treated in Mexico, hospital officials have said.

Debris from the crash exploded into a fireball, and pieces of the plane were blown into the residential and commercial Castor Gardens neighborhood, severely damaging several businesses. City officials said four homes were destroyed, six sustained major damage and 11 were otherwise damaged.

“It was a very steep angle at which that aircraft came down,” Duffy said.

The aircraft’s cockpit voice recorder, recovered about 8 feet (2.4 meters) beneath the ground's surface, was on its way to be examined in Washington, D.C., Duffy said. He said the plane did not have a data recorder, but investigators are hoping to retrieve flight data from the jet’s ground proximity warning system.

“Information can come off that device, whether it’s the speed or location of the aircraft. We will be able to get some data, hopefully, off that device,” he said.

The Philadelphia crash occurred two days after the deadliest U.S. air disaster in a generation, when an American Airlines jet with 60 passengers and four crew members collided in midair in Washington, D.C., with an Army helicopter carrying three soldiers.

Audio recorded by LiveATC captured an air traffic controller at Northeast Philadelphia Airport telling “Medevac Medservice 056” to turn right when departing. About 30 seconds later, the controller repeats the request before asking, “You on frequency?” Minutes later the controller says, “We have a lost aircraft. We’re not exactly sure what happened, so we’re trying to figure it out. For now the field is going to be closed.”

From left; United States Secretary of Transportation Sean Patrick Duffy, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro and Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker along with Philadelphia Managing Director Adam Thiel walk through the scene of a fatal medical jet crash Monday, Feb. 3, 2025, in Philadelphia. (Alejandro A. Alvarez/The Philadelphia Inquirer via AP)

Workers picking up debris at the scene of medical jet crash Monday morning Feb. 3, 2025, in Philadelphia. (Alejandro A. Alvarez /The Philadelphia Inquirer via AP)

NTSB employees walk through the scene of medical jet crash Monday morning Feb. 3, 2025, in Philadelphia. (Alejandro A. Alvarez/The Philadelphia Inquirer via AP)

First responders, Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker, United States Secretary of Transportation Sean Patrick Duffy and Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro survey the scene of a medical jet crash Monday morning Feb. 3, 2025 in Philadelphia. (Alejandro A. Alvarez/The Philadelphia Inquirer via AP)

Police walk through the scene of a medical jet crash Monday morning Feb. 3, 2025, in Philadelphia. (Alejandro A. Alvarez/The Philadelphia Inquirer via AP)

From left; Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker, United States Secretary of Transportation Sean Patrick Duffy, and Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro tour the Friday night crash scene of a medical transport jet Monday morning Feb. 3, 2025, in Philadelphia. (Alejandro A. Alvarez /The Philadelphia Inquirer via AP)

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker and other officials view the aftermath of a fatal small plane crashed in Philadelphia, Monday, Feb. 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

Shown are damaged structures in the aftermath of a fatal small plane crashed in Philadelphia, Monday, Feb. 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker and other officials view the aftermath of a fatal small plane crashed in Philadelphia, Monday, Feb. 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

A makeshift memorial stands near the scean of a fatal small plane crashed in Philadelphia, Monday, Feb. 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

Crime scene tape is wrapped around a tree in the aftermath of a fatal small plane crashed in Philadelphia, Monday, Feb. 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

Workers collect debris in the aftermath of a fatal small plane crashed in Philadelphia, Monday, Feb. 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

Workers collect debris in the aftermath of a fatal small plane crashed in Philadelphia, Monday, Feb. 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker and other officials view the aftermath of a fatal small plane crashed in Philadelphia, Monday, Feb. 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Becky Pepper-Jackson finished third in the discus throw in West Virginia last year though she was in just her first year of high school. Now a 15-year-old sophomore, Pepper-Jackson is aware that her upcoming season could be her last.

West Virginia has banned transgender girls like Pepper-Jackson from competing in girls and women's sports, and is among the more than two dozen states with similar laws. Though the West Virginia law has been blocked by lower courts, the outcome could be different at the conservative-dominated Supreme Court, which has allowed multiple restrictions on transgender people to be enforced in the past year.

The justices are hearing arguments Tuesday in two cases over whether the sports bans violate the Constitution or the landmark federal law known as Title IX that prohibits sex discrimination in education. The second case comes from Idaho, where college student Lindsay Hecox challenged that state's law.

Decisions are expected by early summer.

President Donald Trump's Republican administration has targeted transgender Americans from the first day of his second term, including ousting transgender people from the military and declaring that gender is immutable and determined at birth.

Pepper-Jackson has become the face of the nationwide battle over the participation of transgender girls in athletics that has played out at both the state and federal levels as Republicans have leveraged the issue as a fight for athletic fairness for women and girls.

“I think it’s something that needs to be done,” Pepper-Jackson said in an interview with The Associated Press that was conducted over Zoom. “It’s something I’m here to do because ... this is important to me. I know it’s important to other people. So, like, I’m here for it.”

She sat alongside her mother, Heather Jackson, on a sofa in their home just outside Bridgeport, a rural West Virginia community about 40 miles southwest of Morgantown, to talk about a legal fight that began when she was a middle schooler who finished near the back of the pack in cross-country races.

Pepper-Jackson has grown into a competitive discus and shot put thrower. In addition to the bronze medal in the discus, she finished eighth among shot putters.

She attributes her success to hard work, practicing at school and in her backyard, and lifting weights. Pepper-Jackson has been taking puberty-blocking medication and has publicly identified as a girl since she was in the third grade, though the Supreme Court's decision in June upholding state bans on gender-affirming medical treatment for minors has forced her to go out of state for care.

Her very improvement as an athlete has been cited as a reason she should not be allowed to compete against girls.

“There are immutable physical and biological characteristic differences between men and women that make men bigger, stronger, and faster than women. And if we allow biological males to play sports against biological females, those differences will erode the ability and the places for women in these sports which we have fought so hard for over the last 50 years,” West Virginia's attorney general, JB McCuskey, said in an AP interview. McCuskey said he is not aware of any other transgender athlete in the state who has competed or is trying to compete in girls or women’s sports.

Despite the small numbers of transgender athletes, the issue has taken on outsize importance. The NCAA and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committees banned transgender women from women's sports after Trump signed an executive order aimed at barring their participation.

The public generally is supportive of the limits. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in October 2025 found that about 6 in 10 U.S. adults “strongly” or “somewhat” favored requiring transgender children and teenagers to only compete on sports teams that match the sex they were assigned at birth, not the gender they identify with, while about 2 in 10 were “strongly” or “somewhat” opposed and about one-quarter did not have an opinion.

About 2.1 million adults, or 0.8%, and 724,000 people age 13 to 17, or 3.3%, identify as transgender in the U.S., according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.

Those allied with the administration on the issue paint it in broader terms than just sports, pointing to state laws, Trump administration policies and court rulings against transgender people.

"I think there are cultural, political, legal headwinds all supporting this notion that it’s just a lie that a man can be a woman," said John Bursch, a lawyer with the conservative Christian law firm Alliance Defending Freedom that has led the legal campaign against transgender people. “And if we want a society that respects women and girls, then we need to come to terms with that truth. And the sooner that we do that, the better it will be for women everywhere, whether that be in high school sports teams, high school locker rooms and showers, abused women’s shelters, women’s prisons.”

But Heather Jackson offered different terms to describe the effort to keep her daughter off West Virginia's playing fields.

“Hatred. It’s nothing but hatred,” she said. "This community is the community du jour. We have a long history of isolating marginalized parts of the community.”

Pepper-Jackson has seen some of the uglier side of the debate on display, including when a competitor wore a T-shirt at the championship meet that said, “Men Don't Belong in Women's Sports.”

“I wish these people would educate themselves. Just so they would know that I’m just there to have a good time. That’s it. But it just, it hurts sometimes, like, it gets to me sometimes, but I try to brush it off,” she said.

One schoolmate, identified as A.C. in court papers, said Pepper-Jackson has herself used graphic language in sexually bullying her teammates.

Asked whether she said any of what is alleged, Pepper-Jackson said, “I did not. And the school ruled that there was no evidence to prove that it was true.”

The legal fight will turn on whether the Constitution's equal protection clause or the Title IX anti-discrimination law protects transgender people.

The court ruled in 2020 that workplace discrimination against transgender people is sex discrimination, but refused to extend the logic of that decision to the case over health care for transgender minors.

The court has been deluged by dueling legal briefs from Republican- and Democratic-led states, members of Congress, athletes, doctors, scientists and scholars.

The outcome also could influence separate legal efforts seeking to bar transgender athletes in states that have continued to allow them to compete.

If Pepper-Jackson is forced to stop competing, she said she will still be able to lift weights and continue playing trumpet in the school concert and jazz bands.

“It will hurt a lot, and I know it will, but that’s what I’ll have to do,” she said.

Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Becky Pepper-Jackson poses for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

The Supreme Court stands is Washington, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

FILE - Protestors hold signs during a rally at the state capitol in Charleston, W.Va., on March 9, 2023. (AP Photo/Chris Jackson, file)