Three men were rescued and one remains missing after a small, single-engine plane crash-landed in Setauket Harbor over the weekend, Suffolk County police said.
The group was flying in a Piper Archer four-seater, fixed-wing aircraft from Fitchburg, Mass., to Republic Airport in Farmingdale when the plane began experiencing engine trouble at 11:05 p.m. Saturday, police said.
Austricio Ramirez, a 25-year-old student pilot from the Bronx who was flying the plane, turned the controls over to the instructor pilot, 36-year-old Nelson Gomez of Queens, who made the emergency landing in the harbor, police recounted.
Ramirez, Gomez and a third man, Wady Perez, were rescued by responding officers. The fourth man, 23-year-old Gerson Salmon-Negron of Queens, was last seen exiting the plane into the water, police said.
The three men were taken to Stony Brook University Hospital, where they were treated and released.
Suffolk police, volunteer firefighters, the Brookhaven Town Harbormaster and members of the U.S. Coast Guard searched for the fourth man throughout the weekend.
