Four people aboard a small plane died Thursday when it crashed near a luxury home development 50 miles from West Palm Beach, officials reported.

The 1999 single-engine Cessna Skyhawk SP 172, registered to Rohan Aviation Inc., which is a trademark of Kemper Aviation Inc., crashed shortly after 9 a.m., near a development of 20-acre equestrian home known as Martin County Ranches, the Associated Press reports.

“It's a very rural area,” Martin County fire Chief Cliff Appe said Friday. “In the particular area that it crashed, there was only one house with 3,000 acres. It crashed really close to the main entrance to the house.” No mayday call was received from the plane, Appe said.

Initially the authorities refused to release the identities of the men killed in the crash.

According to Canada.com., two of the dead men have been identified as Damien Marx, 35, and pilot Jeffrey Rozelle, 36. However, the same source reports that among the victims of the plane crash, there is Gareth Akerman, 36, the son of a former Nova Scotia New Democratic Party leader.

Sheriff’s spokeswoman Rhoda Irons declined to confirm the identities of the other two men, including Akerman, pending notification of their families. Akerman was the son of Jeremy Akerman, who led the NDP in Nova Scotia from 1968 to 1980, said the family friend, who identified him.

The crash is under the investigation of the National and Safety Board, which sent two experts to the scene.

The weather was clear at the time of the crash. The plane had taken off from an airport in Lantana but its flight plan was not immediately clear, said Irons.

County Assistant Fire-Rescue Chief Henry Johnson reported there was a small fire and fuel leak, but  the rescue crews managed to keep them under control. No one on the ground was injured. No buildings were damaged.