Last Updated on August 6, 2018 by CCAR Staff
Four Bay Area residents and a Los Angeles man were identified Monday, Aug. 6, as the five who were killed when a plane crashed the day before into the parking lot of a Santa Ana shopping center.
The pilot was Scott Shepherd, 53, of Diablo, Ca., the Orange County coroner’s office said, and the passengers were: Lara Shepherd, 42, of Diablo; Floria Hakimi, 62, of Danville; Navid Hakimi, 32, of Los Angeles; and Nasim Ghanadan, 29, of Alamo.
The Shepherds were married and had two children. Navid Hakimi was Floria Hakimi’s son, according to social-media posts.
All five worked for Pacific Union International, a real estate brokerage company with offices in Danville and Southern California, a company spokesman said.
The purpose of their trip was to participate in a real estate industry conference called the Tom Ferry Success Summit at the Anaheim Convention Center, according to Mark McLaughlin, CEO of Pacific Union International.
“At our meeting today, there were tears and sorrow, joy, disbelief and feelings of loss,” McLaughlin said. “Stories were told about our teammates that inspired amazing laughter, a sense of pride and lots of tears. We’re left with memories of our shared work and lives together that we will hold forever.”
The Hakimis and Ghanadan were well-loved members of the Bay Area’s Persian community.
Floria Hakimi was a founder of the Persian Center in Berkeley, which aims to strengthen Persian identity through social and cultural activities that are shared with anyone who is interested. She gave $5,000 to the center when it started and helped create the center’s vision, said Shahin Tabrizi, the Persian Center’s president.
“She was extremely helpful, well-connected and very well-liked,” Tabrizi said. “She had a fantastic energy about her.”
Nasim Ghanadan taught children the Farsi language at the Nima Farsi School in Danville and volunteered at Room to Read, a nonprofit focused on girls’ education in San Francisco.
“She was a very non-judgmental person who was friends with people in all walks of life,” said older sister Nazanin Ghanadan at their home in Alamo. “She loved cooking and was super active with working out. She wanted to travel, and she wanted to fly her own plane one day.”
Lara Shepherd recently updated her open Facebook page with a picture of two small children, a boy and a girl. A comment underneath a post on that page Monday read, “RIP Scott & Lara, praying for your two little angels.”
In an Instagram post from early Sunday, Floria Hakimi shared a photo of herself boarding an aircraft. Navid Hakimi posted a story on Instagram showing him sitting in a moving plane that appeared to be about to take off. He took a short video clip, showing him seated and the cockpit behind him.
No one on the ground was killed in the Sunday, Aug. 5, crash that occurred near Sunflower Avenue and across the street from South Coast Plaza. The 1973 Cessna 414 was on approach to nearby John Wayne Airport when it went down shortly before 12:30 p.m., diving into an unoccupied red Chevy sedan, parked in front of a CVS.
Shortly after the crash, an air traffic controller directed the pilot of another aircraft to hunt for the downed plane: “Go to South Coast Plaza. See if you can find that aircraft,” the controller says in a radio-transmission recording.
The plane was registered to Category III Aviation Corp., a San Francisco company, and had flown from the East Bay suburb of Concord, according to Federal Aviation Administration records. It was headed to John Wayne.
Monday morning, federal officials were at the crash site continuing their investigation. At a morning press conference, Albert Nixon, senior aviation accident investigator forthe National Transportation Safety Board, said the plane hit four cars in the parking lot, including a red Chevy sedan that took the brunt of the impact.
The pilot declared an emergency but did not say what that emergency was, Nixon said, adding that a preliminary report on the incident would likely be available next week.
“We’re here to gather the facts,” said Jack Vanover, another NTSB investigator. “We’ll be looking at all information regarding the pilot, airplane (and) environmental conditions.”
The investigators did not provide any information about the possible cause of the crash, citing the pending investigation. The aircraft was to be moved Monday to a hangar, where it would be examined further.
Sunday’s crash appeared to be the first for the Cessna, according to a search using the aircraft’s tail number in a National Transportation Safety Board database.
Staff Writers Rick Hurd, Ali Tadayon, Scott Schwebke and Ian Wheeler contributed to this report.
