There were no clear answers Friday as to what caused a deadly private jet crash early Thursday morning in Tierrasanta, though federal authorities said the pilot struck a power transmission line as he approached Montgomery-Gibbs Executive Airport, where two important weather and lighting systems were inoperable at the time and foggy conditions made for poor visibility.
San Diego County officials identified four of the jet’s six occupants killed in the crash and ensuing fire. One was 42-year-old music agent and certified pilot David Shapiro, who owned the company to which the Cessna 550 Citation II was ed.
Authorities have not confirmed if Shapiro was piloting the plane, but said whoever was flying did not declare an emergency or call in any type of mechanical issue with the aircraft before it clipped a power line and slammed into a residential street in the Murphy Canyon military housing community. The crash damaged several homes, blowing a huge, blackened hole in a corner duplex, and ignited several cars in flames. Eight people on the ground suffered injuries, most of them relatively minor.
Max Trescott, a pilot and host of the Aviation News Talk podcast, said the available information about the crash so far indicates the pilot descended too quickly.
“The crux of it was that the pilot flew too low,” Trescott said. “He flew down to about 500 feet, which is 173 feet below the minimums for that approach. … That’s a phenomenal amount to be low on an approach.”
Investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board continued scouring the crash site Friday afternoon, documenting evidence in a burned-out debris field that stretched down the entirety of Sample Street in a neighborhood east of Interstate 15 and south of Aero Drive. The crash site is about 2 miles east of Montgomery-Gibbs in Kearny Mesa, where the plane was attempting to land in foggy conditions around 3:45 a.m. Thursday after flying cross-country from New Jersey with a stop in Kansas.
“I think an important factor is that this pilot had been in the air for seven and a half hours,” Trescott said. “Fatigue could have been a factor.”
The Cessna 550 Citation II, a type of small corporate jet with two engines near the back between the wings and the tail, was not equipped with a flight data recorder, often referred to as a “black box,” according to Dan Baker, the lead investigator from the NTSB. Baker told reporters near the scene Friday that investigators will first probe the wreckage for clues about what caused the crash, then turn their attention to “human factors” such as potential pilot error and the maintenance and performance records of the aircraft.
Baker said the NTSB has not yet determined the cause of the crash, but the agency will release a preliminary report within 30 days and a final report in one to two years.
Crash victims
The Medical Examiner’s Office identified Shapiro, Emma L. Huke, 25, and Celina Marie Rose Kenyon, 36, as victims of the crash. The office did not provide information about where they lived or other personal details.
Shapiro said in a podcast interview that he became instantly hooked on aviation after taking his first intro flight at age 22, the Associated Press reported. Photos of Shapiro show he had a plane tattooed across his throat.
Shapiro’s San Diego-based music agency, Sound Talent Group, issued a statement Thursday confirming he and two employees of the company that he co-founded had been killed.
One of the employees was Huke, according to the statement, which included information provided by family and the music agency.
Huke grew up in Orange County and was a 2022 graduate of the University of Oregon. She ed Sound Talent Group last year as a booking associate, according to the statement.
She was described as smart and organized, having helped Sound Talent Group plan and promote some of its biggest tours. While a fan of all music genres, Huke’s favorite artists she enjoyed seeing live were Taylor Swift and The 1975.
“There was nothing Emma loved more than live music,” a spokesperson for Sound Talent said. “She worked hard to save up money so she could travel to concerts and festivals.”
Her mother, Allison Huke, told the Union-Tribune Saturday that her daughter was “the light of our life and just a beautiful, bright light in the world. And the world is a little less bright now.”
Sound Talent Group also identified Kendall Fortner as another victim of the crash. Authorities have not confirmed her identity.
Fortner attended San Diego State University, ing Sound Talent Group shortly after graduation in 2021 after having interned there while in college.
“Fiercely independent and strong-willed, Kendall was the life of the party and lit up any room she entered,” the company told KPBS in its statement.
Kenyon lived in Carlsbad and was a professional photographer, according to a statement from her family, who said they were “devastated beyond words” by her loss.
In the statement provided by Kenyon’s father, Bryan Feldman, the family said she had taken the private plane over a commercial flight in hopes of getting home in time to take her daughter to school Thursday.
“Family is everything to” Kenyon, the statement said, describing her as an “amazing mother, daughter, sister, granddaughter, partner and friend.”
Among the others believed to have been on the plane was Daniel Williams, the former drummer for Ohio metal band The Devil Wears Prada. Williams had posted several Instagram stories in the hours before the crash showing the Cessna as well as him in the co-pilot seat next to Shapiro.
The Medical Examiner’s office confirmed Saturday that Dominic Damian, a 41-year-old San Diego resident, also died in the crash. The Training Center in Pacific Beach will be having a memorial on Monday morning to honor Damian.
A blackbelt and award-winning jiu-jitsu fighter, Damian is described by his longtime friend and trainer, Baret Yoshida, as a very smart, engaging individual who had advanced quickly in the world of martial arts.
“I trained with him since 2007, and he had a great aptitude for Jiu-jitsu,” Yoshida said. “I early on when he was a white belt, he went to a tournament and really cleaned up, and I realized he was really special. He won a silver and bronze in the International Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Federation world championship.”
Damian, he said, was a longtime friend of Shapiro and had brought the music agent to the gym to meet him. According to Damian’s LinkedIn page, he worked as a senior software engineer for a fantasy sports platform.
“When Dominic would have spare time, he’d come with my students and cross train at the park,” Yoshida recalled. “We were waiting at the park for him to come back from his trip and I checked my messages. I had a message from his wife that said he was in a plane crash and there were no survivors. I was in disbelief.”
Inoperable systems
Baker, the NTSB lead investigator, said two different systems at Montgomery-Gibbs were out of service at the time of the crash. One was a weather reporting system known as an Automated Surface Observing Station.
“The … system, which provides airport weather conditions to pilots, was inoperative at the Montgomery airport at the time of the accident due to an unrelated power surge,” Baker said. He provided no other details about the power surge or how long the weather reporting system had been out of service.
A spokesperson for the city of San Diego, which owns and operates Montgomery-Gibbs, said the airport “was not notified of any outages” involving the weather reporting equipment, which is owned by the Federal Aviation istration.
Trescott said that weather sensors being inoperable is not something that happens a lot, but it was also not something he was shocked to hear.
Baker said radio communications between the pilot and air traffic controllers indicated the pilot knew the weather system was inoperable. An air traffic controller provided the pilot with weather information from Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, about 4 miles north of Montgomery-Gibbs, indicating visibility of half a mile and a cloud ceiling of 200 feet.
“Alright, uh, doesn’t sound great, but we’ll give it a go,” the pilot responded in audio recorded by LiveATC.net.
The other system that was down was a runway lighting system known as the Medium Intensity Approach Lighting System with Runway Alignment Indicator Lights.
FAA records showed the runway lighting system had been out of service since Oct. 24, but the airport had issued an advisory of the outage known as a “notice to airmen,” or NOTAM. Pilots are supposed to check for NOTAMs as part of their flight planning; it was unclear if the pilot on Thursday had done so or if either outage played a factor in the crash.
The indicator lights are a series of flashing lights that extend from the runway toward the incoming plane, according to Trescott, who referred to them as “rails.” He said they lead or guide a pilot to the runway and are “invaluable” in poor visibility conditions.
“In really low visibility, the rails are going to be what helps get you in,” Trescott said. “Not having those is an important thing, because it really does help pilots find the runway when visibility is poor.”
Trescott said the other indicators that were out are used to help pilots figure out what angle they are landing at. Those, he said, are “a little bit less critical.”
The city spokesperson said the lights and visual indicators that were down at the time of the crash are owned and maintained by the FAA, which did not respond to questions late Friday. Other lights at the airport maintained by the city, “including runway edge lights, taxiway lights, airport beacon and others … were operational at the time of the incident,” the city spokesperson said.
Most of the eight people on the ground who were injured sustained minor injuries and were treated at a nearby evacuation center and released. One was taken to a hospital to be treated for smoke inhalation.
The crash left about 60 families displaced Thursday, according to Philip Rizzo, CEO of Liberty Military Housing, which manages the properties where the plane hit. Roughly 40 of them remained displaced Friday and will need temporary housing for at least a week.
Some may need housing much longer, Rizzo said.
Once the NTSB investigators release the site, cleanup — including hazardous materials and soil testing — must be done before families return home.
Most of the evacuees fled in the middle of the night, some without wallets or keys. An emergency declaration issued by San Diego Naval Base commander Capt. Robert Heely cleared the way to provide per diem funds to the families.
Staff writer Lori Weisberg contributed to this report.
This story was updated to include new information about the crash victims.
