Monday, October 6, 2008

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Monday, January 21, 2008
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UPDATE: Private Planes Collide, At Least 5 dead
CORONA, Calif. (AP) -- Two private planes flying about a mile from an airport collided Sunday, killing five people and raining debris down on car dealerships below, authorities said.

Two people were killed from each plane, and the fifth was inside a Chevy dealership that was hit by wreckage, said Wayne Pollack of the National Transportation Safety Board.

The small Cessnas collided at 3:35 p.m. near the small Corona Municipal airport and a freeway in Riverside County, about 45 miles southeast of Los Angeles, FAA spokesman Allen Kenitzer said.

Kenitzer did not immediately know where either plane was headed or whether there were any distress calls.

The Corona airport does not have a staffed control tower, he said.

Television images showed that the smashed fuselage of one of the planes landed atop a parked car.

"The smaller aircraft ... just disintegrated into pieces, maybe fifty pieces coming down," eyewitness Jeff Hardin told KABC-TV. "The other aircraft pretty much stayed intact and started spiraling down."

Eyewitness Hector Hernandez said he saw bodies falling from the sky.

"One of them crashed into the top of a Ford Mustang, and another one fell not too far behind that one on the parking lot," Hernandez told KCBS-TV.

Updated Monday, Jan. 21, 2008 at 7:58 a.m. CST


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Sgt. Don Williamson of the Riverside Sheriff's Department walks past a plane wing in the parking lot of Corona Chevrolet in Corona, Calif. on Sunday. Two private planes flying about a mile from an airport collided Sunday, killing at least four people and raining debris down on car dealerships below, authorities said.
((AP Photo / The Riverside Press-Enterprise))
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