Five Killed When Small Plane Crashes in California Parking Lot

  SANTA ANA, Calif. (AP) — Witnesses watched in horror as a small plane banked low in sunny skies over a Southern California shopping center and then suddenly nosedived, crashing into a parking lot and killing all five people on board. Ella Pham and her boyfriend were walking across the lot Sunday when they saw the twin-engine Cessna plummet. "We looked up to see the plane falling nose first," Pham, 20, she told the Los Angeles Times . "It was so heartbreaking just seeing the plane crumbled into pieces." The pilot of the Cessna 414 and all four passengers were killed but nobody on the ground was hurt, authorities said. The Orange County coroner's office on Monday identified the victims as Scott Shepherd, 53, and Lara Shepherd, 42, of Diablo, California; Floria Hakimi, 62, of Danville, California; Navid Hakimi, 32, of Los Angeles; and Nasim Ghanadan, 29, of Alamo, California. The pilot, Scott Shepherd, declared an emergency before crashing about a mile (1.6 kilometers) from John Wayne Airport, Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Arlene Salac said. The plane was heading to the airport southeast of Los Angeles when it came down and struck an unoccupied parked car in the lot of a Staples store and a CVS pharmacy, Orange County Fire Authority Captain Steve Concialdi said. There was no fire, he said. Jesse Perez was eating lunch with a friend at Buffalo Wild Wings, which shares the parking lot, when he heard the crash. "It sounded like a truc...
Source: JEMS: Journal of Emergency Medical Services News - Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Tags: Major Incidents News Source Type: news