Officials continuing investigating Torrance plane crash, asking public for possible videos
Officials continuing investigating Torrance plane crash, asking public for possible videos
by Nathaniel Percy
Investigators continued looking on Friday, Sept. 20, into what caused a small airplane to crash into a strip mall in Torrance shortly after taking off the day before from Torrance Municipal Airport.
A National Transportation Safety Board investigator was on scene, peering over the wreckage and the surrounding area in the northern portion of the Rolling Hills Plaza, spokesman Peter Knudson said.
NTSB officials planned to remove the wreckage from the site sometime Friday and move it to a more secure location, Knudson said.
Investigators asked the public to provide any video of the plane’s flight to witness@ntsb.gov.
The fixed-wing, single-engine Cessna 177 took off from Zamperini Field at about noon Thursday and crashed through a roof and fell onto a covered back patio area behind a restaurant.
Two men on board the aircraft were assisted out of the plane by Torrance police. One died, with the other hospitalized in critical condition, fire officials said.
The identity of the man who died had not been released yet, pending notification of relatives, but coroner’s officials did say he was in his 70s. It was unclear if he was the pilot or the passenger.
No one on the ground was hurt.
The 1967 aircraft had been sold recently and a new registration application was pending with the Federal Aviation Administration, spokesman Ian Gregor said.
Air-traffic-control communication suggests the pilot may have only intended to fly a one-mile radius around the airport at low altitude.
Another pilot radioed the FAA tower to say that the Cessna had crashed.
Witnesses told the Southern California News Group that the Cessna appeared to be attempting a U-turn back toward the airport before it went down, and that at one point they heard the plane’s engine sputter.
All credit goes to Nathaniel Percy
Originally published on https://www.dailynews.com
