Pilot and passengers killed in San Diego plane crash
24 May 2025 15:28
SAN DIEGO (AFP)The six people onboard a small plane that crashlanded Thursday on a California neighborhood amid dense fog were all killed, according to investigating authorities.The Cessna 550 Citation, which federal records show belonged to music agent Dave Shapiro, plummeted into a residential area of San Diego at 3:47 am (1047 GMT) on Thursday, according to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).It was not immediately clear what caused the Cessna to come plunging into the Murphy Canyon neighborhood, about two miles (3.2 kilometres) from the Montgomery-Gibbs Executive Airport where the aircraft was headed.In an audio recording posted to air traffic website liveatc.net, the pilot can be heard asking about weather conditions prior to descent, while indicating that visibility was down to a minimum."Doesn't sound great, but we'll give it a go," the pilot said.As the plane came down, it clipped a power line and the impact of the crash set several nearby houses and vehicles alight, jolting families awake before dawn."The pilot and passengers were fatally injured," NTSB investigator Dan Baker told a press conference on Friday. He added that no one on the ground had been seriously hurt.While Baker did not specify the number of fatalities, the US Federal Aviation Administration previously said the private plane had six people onboard.At least 10 homes in San Diego's Murphy Canyon neighborhood were hit by debris, while the street was littered with charred remnants, scattered fiberglass and jet fuel.Eight people were treated for minor injuries, according to responding police and firefighters.
The plane was not equipped with a flight data recorder.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Al Etihad
3 hours ago
- Al Etihad
'This isn't real': teacher's narrow escape from Austria school shooter
11 June 2025 14:26 GRAZ, AUSTRIA (AFP)A teacher told AFP Wednesday how he found himself in a corridor with the shooter who killed 10 people in an Austrian school as he fled his empty G. Nitsche was working on his own with the door open on the upper floor of the Dreierschuetzengasse secondary school in Graz when the shooting started."I heard this bang. And I blocked it out," the 51-year-old told reporters, whose students were elsewhere sitting their final year was only when he heard the sound of bullet casings hitting the floor of a corridor outside that "something snapped inside me" and the realisation dawned, he said."I jumped up and thought that as a teacher alone in a classroom with a possible attacker, this is a very bad situation. "And I decided to run."I ran out quickly through the corridor, which is only a few metres long, and then down the stairs."It was then that the evangelical pastor saw the shooter in the corridor of the floor below. The sight of him stopped him in his tracks "for a moment". 'You try to block everything out' "He was trying to shoot the door (of a classroom) open with his rifle."He was busy.... and I didn't look around much either... I didn't hang around," Nitsche said."And as I ran down the stairs, I thought to myself, 'This isn't real, this is a film.'"But when he got to the lower floor, "I saw a student lying on the floor and a teacher was there, and I knew, 'Ah, this is serious.'""As a human being, you really try (to understand what is happening), I know that from my crisis training, but (at the same time) you really try to block everything out," the pastor added."I think the emergency services were there a minute or two later, thank God."What struck Nitsche was the eerie silence that had fallen over the school."It was very quiet. Everyone was was total silence. No screaming, nothing. That's not what school is like."And the emergency services arrived in normal police cars, four of them with bulletproof vests, and then they went in."Nitsche said it was hard to grasp the enormity of what had happened. What he experienced was just one part of "a mosaic with lots of pieces".He went back to help comfort students outside the school Wednesday. A city in shock A large black banner, "Graz stands together", was strung across a fence nearby as Austria's second city tried to come to terms with the groups of students, most dressed in black and many of them crying, placed candles at the entrance of the closed shooting is an unprecedented case of deadly gun violence in the usually peaceful Alpine said the shooter, a 21-year-old former student at the school, killed himself in a toilet after leaving 10 dead or dying and wounding 12 found a "non-functional homemade bomb" during a search of his home. A goodbye letter addressed to the suspect's parents was also recovered, though it included no clues about his in Graz are struggling to express their shock."You can see here how the whole city, probably the whole country, is reeling," Michael Saad, a 22-year-old student, told AFP at a candlelight vigil late was among hundreds gathered at the central square in Graz, many young people, placing candles at the feet of a monument in the square in a sombre atmosphere as people stood in silence. Many hugged with tears in their eyes, while others talked quietly in muffled voices.
Gulf Today
4 hours ago
- Gulf Today
Russian attacks kill 2, wound 13 in Ukraine; Zelensky says its biggest air attacks
Russia sent waves of drones and missiles in an attack on two Ukrainian cities early on Tuesday that killed two people and wounded at least thirteen others, Ukraine officials said. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Tuesday that Russia launched one of its biggest air attacks on Kyiv overnight, using 315 drones and seven missiles in strikes that also hit other parts of the country. "Russian missile and Shahed strikes drown out the efforts of the United States and others around the world to force Russia into peace," Zelensky wrote on X. A maternity hospital and residential buildings in the center of the southern port city of Odesa were damaged in the attack, regional Gov. Oleh Kiper said. Two people were killed and nine injured in the city, according to a statement from the regional prosecutor's office. A local resident looks at a burned building following drones strike on Ukraine's capital Kyiv, Ukraine, on Tuesday. AFP Four people were injured in the attack on the capital, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said. Associated Press journalists heard explosions and the buzzing of drones around the city for hours. The fresh attacks came hours after Moscow launched almost 500 drones at Ukraine in the biggest overnight drone bombardment in the three-year war. Ukrainian and Western officials have been anticipating a Russian response to Ukraine's audacious June 1 drone attack on distant Russian air bases. Plumes of smoke were visible in Kyiv as air defense forces worked to shoot down drones and missiles Tuesday morning. Meanwhile, Ukrainian residents took shelter and slept in metro stations during the hourslong attack. Nina Nosivets, 32, and her 8-month-old son Levko were among them. A view shows a burning apartment building after it was hit by a Russian drone strike, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Odesa, Ukraine, on Tuesday. Reuters "I just try not to think about all this, silently curled up like a mouse, wait until it all passes, the attacks. Distract the child somehow because its probably the hardest thing for him to bear," she said. Krystyna Semak, a 37-year-old Kyiv resident, said the explosions frightened her and she ran to the metro at 2 a.m. with her rug. Russia has been launching a record-breaking number of drones and missiles targeting Ukraine while the two countries continue to swap prisoners of war, the only tangible outcome of recent direct peace talks held in Istanbul. A ceasefire, long sought by Kyiv, remains elusive. Rescuers and members of funeral service carry the body of a resident killed in apartment building during a Russian drone strike, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Odesa, Ukraine, on Tuesday. Reuters In Kyiv, fires broke out in at least four districts after debris from shot down drones fell on the roofs of residential buildings and warehouses, according to the Kyiv City Military Administration. Vasyl Pesenko, 25, stood in his kitchen, damaged in the attack. "I was lying in bed, as always hoping that these Shaheds (drones) would fly past me, and I heard that Shahed (that hit the house),' he said. "I thought that it would fly away, but it flew closer and closer and everything blew away.' Agencies
Khaleej Times
9 hours ago
- Khaleej Times
Nighttime curfew in LA as Trump vows to 'liberate' city
A nighttime curfew was in force in Los Angeles on Tuesday as local officials sought to get a handle on protests that Donald Trump claimed were an invasion by a "foreign enemy." Looting and vandalism has scarred the heart of America's second biggest city as largely peaceful protests over immigration arrests turned ugly after dark. "I have declared a local emergency and issued a curfew for downtown Los Angeles to stop the vandalism, to stop the looting," Mayor Karen Bass told reporters. One square mile (2.5 square kilometres) of the city's more-than-500 square mile area will be off-limits until 6am (1300 GMT) for everyone apart from residents, journalists and emergency services, she added. Stay up to date with the latest news. Follow KT on WhatsApp Channels. One protester told AFP the arrest of migrants in a city with large foreign-born and Latino populations was the root of the unrest. "I think that obviously they're doing it for safety," she said of the curfew. "But I don't think that part of the problem is the peaceful protests. It's whatever else is happening on the other side that is inciting violence." Small-scale and largely peaceful protests — marred by eye-catching acts of violence — began Friday in Los Angeles as anger swelled over ramped up arrests by immigration authorities. At their largest, a few thousand people have taken to the streets, but smaller mobs have used the cover of darkness to set fires, daub graffiti and smash windows. Overnight Monday 23 businesses were looted, police said, adding that more than 500 people had been arrested over recent days. Protests have also sprung up in cities around the country, including New York, Atlanta, Chicago and San Francisco. 'Provide protection' Trump has ordered 4,000 National Guard to Los Angeles, along with 700 active-duty Marines, in what he has claimed is a necessary escalation to take back control — despite the insistence of local law enforcement that they could handle matters. A military spokeswoman said the soldiers were expected to be on the streets later Tuesday or some time on Wednesday. Their mission will be to guard federal facilities and to accompany "federal officers in immigration enforcement operations in order to provide protection." Demonstrators told AFP the soldiers "should be respected" because they hadn't chosen to be in LA, but Lisa Orman blasted it as "ridiculous." "I was here for the Dodger parade," she said referring to the LA team's World Series victory. "It was 100 times bigger. So the idea that the Marines here, it's a big show. The president wants a big show." The Pentagon said the deployment would cost US taxpayers $134 million. Photographs issued by the Marine Corps showed men in combat fatigues using riot shields to practice crowd control techniques at the Naval Weapons Station Seal Beach. 'Behaving like a tyrant' Two dozen miles (40 kilometers) north, the sprawling city of Los Angeles spent the day much as it usually does: tourists thronged Hollywood Boulevard, tens of thousands of children went to school and commuter traffic choked the streets. But at a military base in North Carolina, Trump was painting a much darker picture. "What you're witnessing in California is a full-blown assault on peace, on public order and national sovereignty," he told troops at Fort Bragg. "This anarchy will not stand. We will not allow an American city to be invaded and conquered by a foreign enemy." California Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat who has clashed with the president before, said Trump's shock militarization of the city was the behavior of "a tyrant, not a president." "Sending trained warfighters onto the streets is unprecedented and threatens the very core of our democracy," he said. In a live-streamed address, Newsom called Trump a "president who wants to be bound by no law or constitution, perpetuating a unified assault on American tradition. "California may be first, but it clearly will not end here." In a filing to the US District Court in Northern California, Newsom asked for an injunction preventing the use of troops for policing. 'Incredibly rare' Trump's use of the military is an "incredibly rare" move for a US president, Rachel VanLandingham, a professor at Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles and a former US Air Force lieutenant colonel, told AFP. US law largely prevents the use of the military as a policing force — absent the declaration of an insurrection, which Trump again mused about on Tuesday. Trump "is trying to use emergency declarations to justify bringing in first the National Guard and then mobilising Marines," said law professor Frank Bowman of the University of Missouri.
