Body Found in Wreckage of Missing Plane
The severely burned body of a pilot who had been missing after taking off from a San Joaquin Valley airport Thursday was found Friday afternoon in the wreckage of a plane in the Santa Monica Mountains, authorities said.
The body had not been identified late Friday, said Deputy Michael Irving of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. It was so severely burned that its sex could not immediately be determined.
A sheriff’s helicopter crew sighted the wreckage of the single-engine Cessna 210 in a canyon just off a dirt road near Stunt and Saddle Peak roads, he said. Irving said the plane had taken off from an airport in the Fresno area--possibly Visalia--sometime Thursday. Its final destination was not known.
The San Francisco Civil Air Patrol indicated the last known radio contact with the pilot occurred between 11:30 a.m. and noon Thursday.
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