Singer Jenni Rivera, 6 Others Feared Dead in Mexico Plane Crash (Updated)
Authorities in Mexico said Sunday that the wreckage of a small plane believed to be carrying singing star Jenni Rivera has been found and there are no apparent survivors.
Transportation and communication minister Gerardo Ruiz Esparza told Mexican television that the plane was found in Nuevo Leon state without survivors. The minister said that "everything points toward it being the plane" that carried the Mexican-American singer and six others, according to the Associated Press.
The U.S.-registered Learjet 25 went missing early Sunday after taking off from the city of Monterrey. Rivera was heading for the city of Toluca in central Mexico after a concert in Monterrey on Saturday night.
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Rivera, renowned as an exponent of the Nortena and banda musical styles, has sold some 15 million records and earned Grammy nominations. The Diva of the Banda recently won two Billboard Mexican Music Awards: Female Artist of the Year and Banda Album of the Year for "Joyas prestadas: Banda." Her most well-known songs include "La Gran Senora" and "De Contrabando."
The singer, businesswoman and actress appeared in the movie "Filly Brown," as the incarcerated mother of Filly Brown, and has her own reality shows including "I Love Jenni" and "Jenni Rivera Presents: Chiquis and Raq-C" and her daughter's "Chiquis 'n Control."
Rivera had given a concert before thousands of fans in Monterrey on Saturday night. After the concert she gave a press conference during which she spoke of her emotional state following her recent divorce from former Major League Baseball pitcher, Esteban Loaiza who played for teams including the New York Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers.
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"I can't get caught up in the negative because that destroys you. Perhaps trying to move away from my problems and focus on the positive is the best I can do. I am a woman like any other and ugly things happen to me like any other woman," she said Saturday night, according to the New York Times. "The number of times I have fallen down is the number of times I have gotten up."
The mother of five children and grandmother of two had announced in October that she was divorcing Loaiza after two years of marriage. It was her third marriage.
Born in Long Beach, Calif., to Mexican immigrant parents, the 43-year-old Rivera is a mother of five.
Home page photo by Getty Images
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