Six people were killed in an early Saturday morning plane crash in southern California’s Riverside County, making it the second deadly plane disaster the area has seen in the past week.
The Federal Aviation Administration said the Cessna C550 business jet departed from Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas. At around 4:15 a.m, the jet crashed just north of the French Valley Airport in Murrieta, California. It is not immediately clear who was in the plane at the time of the crash, which took place near Briggs and Auld roads and is now under investigation by the FAA and National Transportation Safety Board.
“Deputies located an aircraft fully engulfed in flames in a field,” the Riverside Police Department said in a statement. “Six occupants from the plane were located and pronounced deceased at the scene.”
The Riverside County Fire Department tweeted that the crash also sparked a fire that took about an hour to contain and burned “approximately one acre of vegetation.”
The crash comes just four days after one male was killed and three more were injured after a single-engine plane struck the side of a building near French Valley Airport. The FAA said that four people were aboard the Cessna 172 when it took off from the California airport around 2:45 p.m. on Tuesday before crashing shortly afterwards. Local television footage showed that the plane was upside down in a parking lot.
The FAA’s preliminary accident report for the Tuesday incident states that the crash occurred following “unknown circumstances after take off.” The plane was registered to California Professional Flyer
