By ,
Published January 13, 2015
A Learjet crashed while departing an airport in Columbia, S.C., killing four passengers and critically injuring two others including the former drummer of the band Blink-182, FAA spokesman Les Dorr told FOX News.
Travis Barker, who was the drummer for the band Blink-182, was one of the two people wounded when the Learjet 60 crashed on a highway and caught fire. The other was a celebrity disc jockey known as DJ AM. The plane was heading to Van Nuys, Calif.
The National Transportation Safety Board will investigate the crash to determine probable cause.
Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Kathleen Bergen said the plane carrying six people was departing shortly before midnight Friday when air traffic controllers reporting seeing sparks. She said the plane went off the runway and crashed on a nearby road.
Barker and DJ AM, whose real name is Adam Goldstein, were in critical condition at a burn center in Augusta, Ga., about 75 miles southwest of Columbia, hospital spokeswoman Beth Frits said.
Two other passengers and two crew members died, said the NTSB.
The Lexington County coroner said Saturday that those killed were pilot Sarah Lemmon of Anaheim Hills, co-pilot James Bland of Carlsbad, passenger Chris Baker, 29, of Studio City, and passenger Charles Still, 25, of Los Angeles.
At the crash site Saturday, the air was still heavy with the odor of jet fuel. A trail of black soot led off a runway, across a five-lane road next to the airport and up an embankment. The nose of the aircraft was gone and the roof was missing from two-thirds of the charred plane.
Barker and Goldstein had performed together under the name TRVSDJ-AM at a free concert in Columbia on Friday night.
"It's absolutely terrible and tragic," Columbia Mayor Bob Coble said.
The show, which included performances by former Jane's Addiction singer Perry Ferrell and singer Gavin DeGraw, drew 10,000 people into the streets of Five Points, the neighborhood near the University of South Carolina, Coble said.
Neither Ferrell nor DeGraw were in the plane, their representatives told AP on Saturday.
One concertgoer said TRVSDJ-AM's performance was unique and different.
"It was literally one of the best shows I've ever scene," said Brett Flashnick, a freelance photographer who works for The Associated Press and attended the concert for a local newspaper.
Barker, 32, was one of the more colorful members of the multiplatinum-selling punk rock band Blink-182, whose biggest album was 1999's CD "Enema of the State" — which sold more than five million copies in the United States alone.
Blink-182's hits included "What's My Age Again?" The band broke up in 2005.
Barker went on to form the rock band (+44) — pronounced "plus forty-four." He also starred in the MTV reality series "Meet the Barkers" with former Miss USA Shanna Moakler, to whom he was married at the time. The show documented the former couple's lavish wedding and life. Their later split, reconciliation and subsequent break-up made them tabloid favorites.
Goldstein is a popular DJ for hire who at one time was engaged to Nicole Richie.
Barker and Goldstein performed as part of the house band at the MTV Video Music Awards earlier this month.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
https://www.foxnews.com/story/former-blink-182-drummer-critically-injured-in-learjet-crash-that-killed-4