Who were they? Looking for answers in Armonk plane crash

When word went out about a small plane bound for Cleveland that was lost somewhere over Westchester on a pea-soup of a Thursday night, two questions needed answering: Where and who?

Investigators learned the first answer at about 11 p.m., Thursday, when — after more than five hours of searching and using "pings" from the plane's occupants' cellphones, tracked by the FBI — they found the wreckage in woods behind an Armonk office park, less than two miles from Westchester County Airport.

Answers to the second question came into focus on Friday.

Updates:Two dead after small plane crashes near Westchester County Airport

The bodies of two men were found near the wreckage of the private single-engine plane, a Beechcraft A36 Bonanza: Pilot Boruch Taub and his passenger, Ben Chafetz, both from Cleveland and members of the orthodox Jewish community.

Taub, 40, owned Masterworks Automotive & Transmission, fixing cars in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. His wife's name is Shoshanah and he had more than four children.

Ben Chafetz, 45, of Beachwood, Ohio, owned a web-development company, 121eCommerce, which has developed websites for Fortune 500 companies. He had seven children with his wife, Smadar.

The Jewish Chronicle reported that Chafetz sent a text message to a WhatsApp group, thinking he was writing to his wife, explaining that the plane had “lost engines” and asked for prayers.

“The message read: ‘I love you and the kids,’” the Chronicle story said.

An eCommerce executive

In an extensive profile in Ami Magazine in February 2022, Chafetz chronicled his rise in the world of eCommerce.

Born in Jerusalem to American parents (his father died when Chafetz was an infant), he grew up in Providence, Rhode Island, and Worcester, Massachusetts, in a very small Jewish community.

“I remember the first time I was in New York; I was in sixth or seventh grade at the time. I was shocked to see someone on the street with a yarmulke. I yelled with excitement every time I saw someone with a yarmulke. Until then I had no clue there were other frum Jews in America,” he told the magazine.

He went to high school at a yeshiva in Rochester, New York, Chofetz Chaim, delivered diamonds in New York’s Diamond District, and then went to work as a collection agent for Econophone, collecting overdue bills. He told the magazine that he felt sorry for people who wept about not being able to pay their bills, so he paid their bills.

“It was a tremendous source of pride for me that not one person ever failed to pay me back,” he said.

For a time, Chafetz lived in Monsey, in Rockland County, where his rabbi was Rabbi Ben Tzion Shafier. He got into recruiting software engineers, which led him to build an ecommerce business that became 121eCommerce, with about 70 employees in the U.S., Argentina and Ukraine and offices in Cleveland and Argentina.

“I realized that there weren’t any web development companies that operated with the understanding that they aren’t building a website, they’re building a business,” Chafetz told Ami. “That was the marketing aspect that I brought to the company — the fact that I could speak the clients’ language, and they understood that I could develop their business better than anyone else.”

Cleveland Jewish News reported that Chafetz received the Community Service Award from the Hebrew Academy of Cleveland in 2018.

'A hole at the dinner table'

At a Friday morning press conference at the county office building, Westchester County Executive George Latimer said the strict orthodox rules regarding the recovery of the bodies were adhered to, and that the bodies had been released and were being flown to Cleveland in keeping with Jewish tradition.

"Mr. Taub and Mr. Chafetz are gone," Latimer said. "They leave a hole at the dinner table in their homes. They leave a hole in the life of their communities, communes of faith, and in losing them, that is the overarching story of today."

Latimer talked about Chafetz's message to his wife in his final minutes.

"I don't think any of us want to contemplate what it would be like to know that your life was about to end and you were going to speak to the people that you loved the most and try to say something to them to summarize the life that you've had together," Latimer said. "That is what last night was about. It was also about the professionalism and the bravery of the men and women who responded to this, which is everything they could to try to help that plane come in and upon being unable to do so, went out to recover the aftermath of this."

Latimer later spoke about what faced Taub in trying to pilot a plane through driving rain and thunder and lightning, hoping to land it safely.

"I think about the human element," Latimer said. "Let us pray for Mr. Taub and Mr. Chafetz and their families. We owe them a debt of respect."

Rabbi Yitzchok Margareten of Congregation Shomre Shabbos in Cleveland Heights remembered Taub, for whom he'll offer a funeral service on Sunday, as one of "those positive people that you want around a community at large."

"He was a very kind person, giving person, involved in the community," the rabbi said. "(He) was always available to do anybody a favor of any kind. He was a big family man and was a wonderful father to his children, a wonderful husband, a wonderful person, really."

Margareten said Taub had three older children, older than 12, but was unsure how many younger children there are in the Taub home.

Bodies flown to Cleveland

Richard Wishnie, Westchester's emergency services commissioner, said at the Friday morning press conference that the bodies were being flown to Cleveland for burial before sundown, in keeping with Jewish tradition and rites.

Michael Kumin, of Berkowitz-Kumin-Bookatz Memorial Chapel in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, said he and his staff were handling arrangements for both families, with Chafetz's services to be held Friday and Taub's on Sunday.

Wishnie said the search for the wreckage was hampered by driving rain, which rendered drones useless. He lauded the crews who trekked through thick woods across a vast area to locate the wreckage, some of which was still suspended in trees.

NTSB investigators are heading to the site in the coming hours to conduct a full review of what transpired.

The plane left JFK Airport at 4:58 p.m. Thursday, bound for Cuyahoga County Airport in Richmond Heights, Ohio, but experienced engine trouble shortly after takeoff. Flight traffic controllers diverted the pilot to Westchester County Airport, and flight-tracking software shows the pilot looping over Long Island Sound and zigzagging back to the airport, crashing at 5:33 p.m., about a mile-and-a-half from the runway.

This article originally appeared on New York State Team: Two Cleveland men killed in Armonk, NY, plane crash