Four members of a Miami family were found dead after the small plane carrying them went down in the ocean off the Bahamas on Monday, September 7, 2026, relatives said in a statement Tuesday, September 8.
According to the family, those aboard were the pilot, 80-year-old Mario Lamar; his spouse, 79-year-old Lili Lamar; and a pair of their grandchildren, 28-year-old Sofia Sosa and 22-year-old Christian Sosa. All four were from Miami.
“It is with profound sadness that we confirm all four of our family members have been found deceased,” the family said in the statement, which noted that relatives who joined the search found the bodies themselves and had to lift them onto their own vessels. The statement said the family was working with the U.S. Coast Guard to bring them home safely and with dignity.
A Labor Day Flight That Never Landed
The aircraft, a PA-34 Piper with five seats and four people aboard, lifted off from Great Harbour Cay around 11:15 a.m. Monday, bound for Miami Executive Airport in Opa-locka, a city near Miami. Police in the Bahamas said the plane crash-landed near Andros Island, the country’s largest island, roughly 15 miles offshore.
Once the incident was reported, the Royal Bahamas Defence Force asked the Coast Guard for help, around 2 p.m. Monday. As of September 8, the cause of the crash had not been determined.
Silvia Larrieu, a niece of Mario Lamar, said her uncle had filed a flight plan that gave the family an approximate arrival time at the airport. She described the morning the group left Great Harbour Cay as beautiful, and said her uncle was in good spirits and chatting with people at the airport before departure.
“This wasn’t anything out of the ordinary,” Larrieu told CBS News Miami, adding that the family flew the route regularly.
Larrieu said tracking data from the flight platform FlightAware showed the aircraft skirting the edge of a storm before it abruptly reversed course. Larrieu’s cousin, the mother of the two adult grandchildren aboard, alerted authorities when she did not hear from her children after they were supposed to have touched down.
Relatives Searched the Water Themselves
Larrieu said two civilian boats set out from Miami to look for the missing plane. The Royal Bahamas Defence Force said a family member located all four bodies.
Earlier Tuesday, before the four were found, the family said it was heartbroken and desperate, that it was not aware of authorities actively searching the water for its remaining missing relatives, and that it was begging for help. Larrieu appealed for anyone able to get out on the water to join the effort, saying the family needed answers and wanted its relatives home.
The Royal Bahamas Police Force said human remains were recovered and were in police custody, and that they were expected to be transferred to New Providence, the main commercial hub of the island nation.
A Pilot, an Attorney and Two Grandchildren
In a statement issued Monday, the family described Mario Lamar as a seasoned pilot with more than 40 years in the air. Larrieu called him a lifelong aviator and said the group left the island the way he always had. She said he kept an apartment in Great Harbour Cay and had flown the route many times without trouble, and that when he was not flying he spent time at the hangar going over the aircraft and its maintenance.
Lamar practiced law for more than 50 years and kept an office in Miami, according to a state database. Public records indicate that his daughter, Guilaine Sosa — the mother of the two grandchildren killed — was a lawyer at the same firm.
Larrieu said her uncle had spent a long holiday weekend in the Bahamas with the two grandchildren who boarded the plane and two other grandchildren.
Christian Sosa graduated in 2026 with a marketing degree from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. His LinkedIn profile said he shot sports photography, including a recent stint of seasonal freelance work with the Los Angeles Rams. In a post there, he described photographing a game as the job he had dreamed of as a boy, when he spent summers in Miami shooting training camps as a fan. “Getting to shoot in the NFL was surreal,” he wrote. He also maintained an Instagram account full of nature and landscape photos taken at the Grand Canyon and other national parks.
One of his professors at Loyola Marymount, Matt Stefl, traveled with Sosa and other students to the United Nations in May for a collegiate program in which the group pitched a marketing campaign. Stefl said the news left him gutted and remembered Sosa as a young man who lit up every room he walked into.
Sofia Sosa earned a master’s degree in physician assistant studies from Florida International University in December 2023. Her Facebook page, which used the nickname “Sofi” and had not been updated since 2023, listed her as a student at the university’s Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine in 2021. She had also promoted a fundraiser for a childhood cause on her social media.
In its statement Tuesday, the family thanked everyone who supported it, searched alongside it and kept the relatives in their prayers, and asked for privacy as it mourned.