Plane crashes into Maryland house, kills former Brick woman

 on December 09, 2014 at 8:20 AM, updated December 09, 2014 at 1:41 PM

A former Brick woman and two of her children were among six people killed when a plane crashed into a suburban Maryland neighborhood on Monday morning, authorities said.
Marie Gemmell, 36, and her two sons, 3-year-old Cole and 7-week-old Devin, died after a part of the twin-engine jet bound for nearby Montgomery County Airpark came down on her home in Gaithersburg at 10:44 a.m.
The three people aboard the plane, which took off in Chapel Hill, N.C. also died.
Gemmell was a 1997 graduate of Brick Memorial High School, according to NBCPhiladelphia.com. Her husband Ken and 5-year-old daughter Arabelle were not home at the time.
The former New Jerseyan worked at a bank and was on maternity leave, the Washington Post reported. She attended Rowan University, according to one of her social media accounts.
Gemell and the boys were found in a second-floor bathroom. She was lying on top of her young sons in an apparent effort to shield them from the smoke and fire, said police Capt. Paul Starks.
The fuselage of the jet crashed into the front lawn of an adjacent home, which was heavily damaged by fire, and investigators believe one of its wings, which had fuel inside, was sheared off and tore through the front of the Gemmell home, said Robert Sumwalt, a National Transportation Safety Board member. Witnesses reported seeing and hearing a secondary explosion after the plane hit the ground.
The two-story, wood-frame home was gutted. The first floor was nearly completely blown out and smoke drifted from a gaping hole in what was left of the collapsing roof. No one was injured in the adjacent homes that also had major damage.