Investigators work at the scene of a plane crash in Greenacres, Fla., Monday, Nov. 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Investigators found part of the tail of the jet that crashed in South Florida more than a mile from the crater caused when the aircraft made impact.

National Transportation Safety Board member Tom Chapman said during a news conference Tuesday that the discovery of tail parts confirms the plane was breaking apart before it hit the ground.

Chapman said the tail’s elevator was broken into three parts, and without that intact, pilot would not have been able to pull the Learjet out of its nose dive.

“The function of the elevator is to control the pitch up and down,” he said. “At those speeds I don’t know that it would’ve been effective even if it had still been attached to the aircraft, but knowing that it was lost is a very important piece of evidence in terms of pointing us towards other things to investigate.”

Chapman acknowledged Monday that parts of the jet likely started to break off before it struck the ground. The co-pilot, Nathalia Gadelha Filgueiras, told air traffic controllers minutes before the crash that ice was accumulating on the plane and that severe turbulence had thrown it up and down by more than 700 feet.

Friends and family celebrate and mourn the pilot

Family and friends of one of the pilots have been posting online about the longtime aviator, husband and father from the Philadelphia suburbs.

Jeff Gregory, 55, was one of two crew members in the cockpit of the Bahamas-bound Learjet 60 as it encountered bad weather and slammed into the ground Sunday afternoon in Greenacres, about 7 miles (11 kilometers) southwest of West Palm Beach.

As the plane plunged, a man’s voice could be heard reciting the Lord’s Prayer in the background of the copilot’s final radio transmissions to air traffic control. Friends are convinced it was Gregory, a devout Christian.

Thomas Noetzel, the director of operations at the company that operated the flight, Upper Jets, organized an online fundraiser to support Gregory’s wife and children.

Chapman, the National Transportation Safety Board member, said Monday that weather would be a key focus of the investigation. A preliminary report describing what happened will be released in about a month, but it will likely take more than a year to determine the cause of the crash.