A woman died and four other people, including three children, were seriously injured today when a home-built light plane headed for Fullerton crashed on a military golf course in San Diego County.
The single-engine Velocity Super XLRG5 went down near the 11th hole of the Admiral Baker Golf Course in Tierrasanta, in the northern reaches of the military golf course just east of Interstate 15, shortly before 1 p.m., according to the San Diego Fire-Rescue Department.
A woman in the front passenger seat of the aircraft, which overturned after impacting the ground, died at the scene. Emergency-services helicopters landed on the links so medics could airlift two of the badly injured survivors to a hospital, a dispatcher said. The others were transported by ground ambulance.
The relationships among the five occupants, all of whom had to be extricated from the upside-down plane, were not immediately clear.
Soon after taking off from Montgomery Field about 12:45 p.m., the pilot radioed its tower to report that a door on the plane had fallen off and he was heading back to the airport to make an emergency landing, the Federal Aviation Administration reported. Flight controllers then lost contact with him, and the crash was reported moments later.
The aircraft, which is registered to a Mesa, Ariz., man, was en route to Fullerton Municipal Airport at the time of the accident, according to the FAA.
The door that came off the aircraft was found in a ravine off Santo Road, which is about a half-mile west of the northwestern edge of the golf course.
It was the second deadly light-plane crash to occur in the San Diego area in a week.
Last Tuesday morning, a twin-engine Beech 95-B55 went down in a field behind an Oceanside primary school and burst into flames, killing the pilot and sole occupant, 83-year-old Cecil Judd of San Clemente.
Witnesses said Judd's aircraft was "in obvious distress" with a sputtering engine just before it dropped nose-first into the brushy lot near San Luis Rey Elementary School, which had no classes in session at the time.
Previous story from City News Service:
One person died and four others, including three children, were seriously injured today when the home-built light plane they were aboard crashed on Admiral Baker Golf Course in Tierrasanta.
The single-engine Velocity Super XLRG5 went down near the 11th hole in the northern reaches of the military golf course just east of Interstate 15 shortly before 1 p.m., according to police and the San Diego Fire-Rescue Department.
One of the two adults aboard the aircraft died at the scene. Emergency-services helicopters landed on the links so medics could airlift two of the badly injured survivors to a hospital, a dispatcher said. The others were transported by ground ambulance.
Soon after taking off from Montgomery Field about 12:45 p.m., the pilot radioed the tower to report that a door on the plane was stuck open and he was heading back to the Kearny Mesa airport to make an emergency landing, the Federal Aviation Administration reported. Flight controllers then lost contact with him, and the crash was reported moments later.
The aircraft, which is registered to a Mesa, Ariz., man, was en route to Fullerton Municipal Airport in Orange County at the time of the accident, according to the FAA.
Along with the pilot and the children, a woman was aboard the ill-fated flight. The relationship of the five to each other was not immediately clear.
It was the second deadly light-plane crash to occur in the San Diego area in a week.
Last Tuesday morning, a twin-engine Beech 95-B55 went down in a field behind an Oceanside primary school and burst into flames, killing the pilot and sole occupant, 83-year-old Cecil Judd of San Clemente.
Witnesses said Judd's aircraft was "in obvious distress'' with a sputtering engine just before it dropped nose-first into the brushy lot near San Luis Rey Elementary School, which had no classes in session at the time.
