SANTEE (CBS 8) - The names of two people who were killed in a plane crash in Santee Thursday have been released.
They are 50-year-old Jeffrey Michael Johnson of El Cajon, and 59-year-old Robert C. Sarrisin of Rancho Penasquitos.
Authorities say Sarrisin was a flight instructor training Johnson to fly the Piper Cherokee, which is owned by the company that operates Golden State Flying Club in El Cajon.
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This is the latest information. The original story is below.
SANTEE (CBS 8) - A small plane crashed shortly after takeoff Thursday morning in Santee, west of Gillespie Field, killing both people on board.
The plane went down in the driveway of a home on Paseo De Los Castillos around 9:20 a.m. A witness at the scene reported that the plane clipped the roof of a home, then flipped over and landed upside down.
The Golden State Flying Club has confirmed with CBS News 8 that the single-engine plane, a Piper Cherokee, belonged to them and was an instructional flight with a student pilot and an instructor pilot on board. The instructor died at the scene. The student died, after being transported to Sharp Memorial Hospital.
Santee Fire Chief Richard Mattick confirmed that no one on the ground was injured.
A neighbor who witnessed the event told CBS News 8 that he ran outside after he heard the plane’s engine stuttering:
“I looked out my bedroom window and this thing is banking around, wings up and down sideways, and I could tell he was looping around trying to get back to the airport and you could see he was not going to make it,” said Craig Liley.
Once Liley heard the crash, he said he jumped in his car and drove down the cul de sac.
“It went sideways into a driveway and hit the back of a car and then slid into a truck and pushed the truck into the neighbor’s house. There was an RV between the houses and they were in the process of backing the RV up and then they had to get garden hoses on it,” continued Liley.
The National Transportation Safety Board was responding to the crash and Paseo De Los Castillos was closed for period of time Thursday during the investigation.