Last Updated on January 24, 2020 by CCAR Staff
The three passengers and pilot who died this week in a plane crash in Corona were identified Thursday by the Riverside County Coroner’s Office.
Joseph ZIngali, 85, of Torrance; Teresa Rodriguez, 63, of Whittier; Daniel Rodriguez, 70, of Whittier; and Paula Mitchell, 61, of La Mirada, all died when a Beech Bonanza went down shortly after takeoff at Corona Municipal Airport at around noon Wednesday.
The coroner’s office listed the time of death as 12:40 p.m. for all four occupants.
It was not immediately clear who the pilot was at the time of the crash.
National Transportation Safety Board investigators spent part of Thursday examining the burned wreckage of the single-engine airplane that crashed during takeoff from Corona Municipal Airport.
According to Corona police, fire crews reached the crash site within 10 minutes and found the plane engulfed in flames, which were doused after burning about a quarter-acre of brush. No homes or other structures were in the immediate vicinity.
A Corona Fire Department spokesman said that the Bonanza had been topped off with 80 gallons of fuel. The plane hit a fence after rising only a few feet from the runway surface, causing it to cartwheel onto vacant property owned by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Witnesses said that the pilot appeared unable to rotate the plane as he approached the runway edge. Corona Municipal Airport’s single general aviation runway is only 3,200 feet long, and is bounded at both ends by thick brush, with power lines on the east end of the field.
A preliminary NTSB report on the crash will likely be published next week.
The airport was reopened on Thursday afternoon, according to the Corona Fire Department.
