WEST PALM BEACH, November 3, 2026 — A Colorado technology founder, his wife and their two small children were among the nine people killed when a Learjet 60 plunged into a Palm Beach County roadway on Sunday, according to a joint statement from the families of the seven passengers. The children, 4-year-old Emma and 2-year-old Charlie, were traveling with their parents, Adam Robinson, 45, and Helen Sharp, 40.
The statement, provided to Fox News Digital, remembered the couple as devoted parents and the children as the center of their world. “Adam and Helen were devoted parents, and Emma, 4, and Charlie, 2, were the light of their lives,” the families said. “Helen and Adam were the love affair that will last forever.”
The statement added that the couple’s “warmth, generosity and gift for making people feel welcome touched so many lives,” and that their loss “will be felt deeply by all those who loved them and who they loved in return.”
A Family That Had Just Settled in Aspen
The Robinsons moved to Aspen, Colorado, in January 2026 after years in Austin, Texas, Robinson said on the ProfitLed podcast. In that interview he described a life built around his family and his work. “I feel like I’m living the dream,” he said. “I love the fact that I get to see my kids in the morning and the evening, and I don’t have to travel for work that much, and I get to live in this place that’s always been my dream. And my wife is super happy because she can be a full-time artist.”
Robinson co-founded Robly, an email marketing platform, and founded Retention.com, which uses technology to connect e-commerce website visitors to their email addresses. The business later launched RB2B, which helps companies identify potential customers browsing their sites, and he also led MoltSets, which provides business contact information including work emails and phone numbers.
On the day of the crash, Robinson wrote on LinkedIn that RB2B had reached $10 million in annual recurring revenue. “RB2B is $10m ARR with 1 FTE,” he wrote. “MoltSets is almost $1m ARR.” Two months earlier he had put RB2B at $9.5 million and called reaching $10 million with a small team “the promised land.”
His final post described a friendly debate with Jesse Ouellette over whether the two products should be combined or kept separate, an argument the pair planned to settle live on Tuesday. “So we’re settling it LIVE,” Robinson wrote. “There’s much more to his argument, but I’m saving it for Tuesday. Grab some popcorn and pick a side.”
Retention.com, RB2B and MoltSets remembered him as “a friend, a mentor and a bold, outspoken leader who lived life to the fullest.” The companies said he “cared deeply about the people around him and brought energy and conviction to everything he built.”
Robinson was a familiar figure in Austin’s startup scene. “Adam was part of the entrepreneurial fabric of Austin,” said Thom Singer, CEO of the Austin Technology Council, which promotes the local industry. It is the second time this year that Austin has lost a tech entrepreneur in a plane crash, following the June death of Joshua Baer, who led a venture capital firm that supported tech startups.
The Co-Pilot Who Learned to Fly Before She Could Drive
The co-pilot was identified by her mother as Nathalia Gadelha Filgueiras, a 20-year-old who earned her private pilot’s license at 17 while a senior at West Boca Raton Community High School. Her mother, Camila Corteleti, confirmed the identification to the New York Post. Filgueiras, who would have turned 21 in January, had been working as a commercial pilot for nine months and had 1,300 hours of flying experience, her stepfather Thiago Corteleti told the Post.
She grew up in Palm Beach County and got her license in October 2023, before she had a driver’s license. “I definitely do brag because people say, ‘Oh, you can’t drive,’ and I’m like, ‘Yeah, but I can fly,’” she told CBS12 at the time. The Palm Beach County School District’s aviation academy paid for her license as part of a program in which students practice flying on simulators and drones.
Filgueiras began lessons in 2020 and was also taught by her father, who took up flying for fun in 2018. The middle of three sisters, she decided on her career after a flight in his small Beechcraft Bonanza. “One day after flying with him, she came home, and we were in our room, and she walked in, and she said, ‘I’m gonna be a pilot,’” Camila recalled through tears. Her stepfather answered: “If that’s what she wants to be, she will be a pilot.”
Her mother said she had long feared where her daughter’s ambition would take her. “I wanted her to live her dream, but I knew that her dream was going to be the thing that would take her away from me,” Camila said. “I knew that a plane was gonna take me away from me. I always knew it but I was so proud of her. I know she was living her dream.”
Filgueiras’s license showed she had the rating to fly the jet but not to be in command of the flight, according to the Denver Post. The pilot in command was named in media reports as Jeffery Gregory, though authorities had not immediately disclosed his identity. The families of the seven passengers made a point of including the crew in their grief. “Our hearts are also with the families of the pilots, who are grieving alongside us,” their statement said.
The Others on Board
Two more passengers were identified as Rachael Reed and Charmi Fehr, according to the Denver Post. Anita Maria Cetina, who helped care for the Robinson children, was also killed.
The Learjet departed Austin-Bergstrom International Airport at about 10:37 a.m. Sunday bound for North Eleuthera in the Bahamas, with two crew members and seven passengers aboard. It came down shortly before 1 p.m. on Military Trail, a six-lane road lined with businesses and restaurants between Cresthaven Boulevard and 10th Avenue North, nine miles from President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. The impact left a deep crater and burning debris scattered across sports fields, businesses and homes, and no one on the ground was reported injured, though the BBC reported that one man sustained a leg injury.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis described the scene bluntly. “It was a cataclysmic plane crash,” he said. “It looked like a missile going down.”
What Investigators Are Examining
The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating whether the aircraft broke apart before impact, with ice accumulation and turbulence as major focus areas. NTSB member Tom Chapman said the crew reported ice and moderate turbulence at about 35,000 feet and asked to climb to 37,000 feet. Less than 30 seconds after the request was approved, the plane began to descend and the crew issued a mayday call. The transmission then became “unintelligible,” Chapman said. “Sadly, all aboard were lost.”
Air traffic control audio captured the crew reporting an outside air temperature of -47 degrees Celsius and turbulence bouncing the plane by up to 700 feet. “Mayday, mayday,” the pilot told the Miami Air Route Traffic Control Center. “We’re descending 10,000 feet per minute!” Moments later: “We are in an overspeed condition descending 20,000 feet per minute. We’re going to crash into the ground!” About 35 seconds after the initial mayday, the last remark from the cockpit appears to be “we’re out of time.”
Flight tracking data showed the jet descended 27,000 feet in about one minute. Thunderstorms had been reported in the area, and the plane passed through a stronger storm cell a few minutes before it began descending, though it is unclear whether the storm contributed. The NTSB said determining a probable cause will be a “lengthy investigatory process,” and officials are trying to find out whether a cockpit voice recorder was on board and whether it can be recovered. Recovering the wreckage from the crater will be a “daunting challenge,” said Timothy Monville, an air safety investigator with the board.
The crash is the second deadliest in the United States this year, according to NTSB records, after 12 people died in June when a skydiving plane crashed in Butler, Missouri. It is also the worst crash involving a Learjet 60, according to data from the Flight Safety Foundation. In 2008, four people were killed when a Learjet 60 bound for Los Angeles crashed on takeoff from Columbia, South Carolina.
The families’ statement closed by asking that the four Robinsons be remembered together.
Sources
- Exclusive | Learjet co-pilot in fatal Florida crash ID’d as Nathalia Filgueiras, 20, who got her license in high school
- Learjet crashes and erupts into flames in Florida, killing all 9 on board | CNN
- Colorado family of 4 among those killed in Florida plane crash
- Fatal Learjet Crash: New Details Emerge About its Sudden Descent
- Austin tech founder killed with wife and children in Florida jet crash had reached a $10M business milestone
- Plane may have broken apart ahead of deadly Florida jet crash, say investigators
Photo: Chris Leipelt / Unsplash (Unsplash License)
