Two people on a small, single-engine plane died when the the aircraft crashed and ended up in the backyard of a home in California on Saturday, authorities said.
NBC Los Angeles aerial footage of the crash site in the city of Simi Valley, about 42 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles, showed a body on the ground, though its connection to the incident was unconfirmed.
Simi Valley police said two people and a dog believed to have been on the plane were killed when it crashed shortly before 2 p.m. It ended up in a residential backyard. No injuries were reported on the ground.
“The plane hardly exists anymore,” police Simi Valley Police Department Senior Officer Casey Nicholson said at the scene. “It’s wreckage.”
The Ventura County Fire Department said the plane struck two homes, sparking fires, but residents inside each evacuated and were unharmed. The flames were extinguished, but the homes sustained structural damage.
Residents of each home were told the residences are uninhabitable, meaning they can’t return until sufficient repairs are made, Nicholson said.
The Federal Aviation Administration initially said the pilot was the only person on board the aircraft, which it said was a Van’s RV-10, a four-seat, single-engine plane shipped as a kit and intended to be assembled by customers.
The plane took off from the small airport in the city of Lancaster, a high desert community in Los Angeles County, en route to Camarillo Airport, which is about 20 miles west of Simi Valley, the FAA said in a statement. Both are noncommercial airports.
The crash site is Wood Ranch, a hillside neighborhood of two-story houses. Video showed residents and first responders gathering near a hillside after the crash, with separate imagery showing smoke coming from the rooftop of a home.
Investigators with the National Transportation Safety Board were at the scene late Saturday and would like return Sunday, Nicholson said. The FAA said the NTSB is leading the investigation into the cause of the crash.
