Crime & Safety

Update: Mexican Banda Singer Jenni Rivera Feared Dead

A plane carrying the Long Beach native and sometime Encino resident, one of the biggest stars in Mexico TV, vanished from radar and wreckage of a plane has been found, authorities report.

UPDATED 10:30 p.m.: ABCNews.com reported that Jenni Rivera's father, who lives in Lakewood, confirmed her death, and a fan vigil unfolded in Lynwood. #Jenni and #IloveJenni were trending on Twitter.

UPDATED 5 p.m.: Adding Long Beach street of residence and a background story.

A Learjet carrying Mexican-American "banda'' singer and Long Beach native Jenni Rivera disappeared from radar near Monterey in northern Mexico Sunday, and wreckage has been found, a Monterey television affiliate reported

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Rivera, 43, is one of Mexico's biggest television stars, whose records dominate the "banda'' style of regional Mexican music popular in California and northwestern Mexico. She was born in and lived in Long Beach, reportedly on Market Street. She attended but did not graduate Poly High School, and as an adult lived in Mexico and Encino.

"Earth lost an amazing person, but a legend was born!" a fan tweeted at #ilovejenni.

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Searchers reportedly found wreckage but no survivors near Iturbide, Nuevo Leon, according to the city's mayor, quoted on the Televisa station in Monterey. Iturbide is 60 miles from Monterey. Rivera's California driver's license was among the evidence taken from the crash site, according to reports.

The plane was owned by a Las Vegas company, Starlight Management, and it had departed earlier from Houston, according to an internet flight tracking service. Initial reports indicated the plane had departed Monterey after a concert at 3:15 a.m. and was headed to an airport near Mexico City.

Six people were on board, the General Directorate of Civil Aviation said in a statement released in Mexico City. 

An NBCUniversal spokeswoman confirmed that Rivera was aboard the plane, according to the Los Angeles Times, which also reported seven people, including the pilots and crew, were thought to be on the plane.

Rivera's career has been soaring, the Times reported. The singer is best known for her interpretations of regional Mexican music, norteno and banda. She also is one of NBCUniversal's brightest bilingual television stars, the Times reported.

The O.C. Weekly columnist Gustavo Arellano (Ask a Mexican) filed this story, and a link inside the piece has background on the popular singer.
http://blogs.ocweekly.com/heardmentality/2012/12/jenni_rivera_plane_missing.phpRivera's

The Times noted that "I Love Jenni," Rivera's reality show on the Telemundo cable channel, mun2, "has been one of the channel's highest rated shows. The program is in its second year."

Rivera has not only been one of the biggest stars on Mexico TV, she has been popular on "regional Mexican'' stations in Los Angeles and elsewhere in California.

Arellano posted Sunday:

"Rivera grew up in Long Beach, attending Long Beach Poly, but having to finish her GED in continuation school because she became pregnant as a teenager. Nevertheless, she found massive success in Mexican regional music, and has spent the past five years creating a second career as a media and business mogul--the latter through wise investments in real estate, beauty salons, and makeup lines, the former with two reality shows based on the lives of her and her daughters.

"And she was just about to make her mark on the rest ofAmerica; last week, it was announced that Rivera had signed on with ABC to star in a comedy that, as Deadline.com put it, would have 'Rivera as a strong, middle-class, single Latina woman working to raise a family using unique parenting skills, while struggling to run a family business and navigate her extended, co-dependent relatives -- all while fighting the cultural perception that she needs a man to do it.'

According to the L.A. Times, Rivera's Encino home is a 9,527-square-foot residence south of Ventura Boulevard that she purchased for $3.3 million in 2009.


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