LA fire crews find 1 dead following search for missing plane

LOS ANGELES (AP) — One person was found dead following an intensive search for a small airplane that crashed in a foggy area of Los Angeles Saturday night, authorities said.

The Los Angeles Fire Department issued an online alert at 11:20 p.m. saying one victim was found at the scene where the single-engine aircraft crashed.

The pilot was not immediately identified and no one else was believed to have been on the plane.

Fire department ground crews located the downed plane on a steep hill above a home at Beverly Glen Circle.

An air traffic controller initially reported the plane as missing. The controller lost radar contact with the plane, which was believed to have been traveling between Santa Monica Airport and Van Nuys Airport, the fire department said in an alert shortly after 8 p.m.

There were no calls to 911 reporting a crash, the department said.

Fire department helicopters and ground crews searched for nearly an hour before a helicopter located a signal from an aircraft emergency position radio beacon near Beverly Glen Terrace and Beverly Glen Boulevard.

Ground personnel then conducted a grid search of the Beverley Crest area around Mulholland Drive, which was “shrouded with thick ground level fog,” the department said.

Searchers used information from the pilot’s cellular phone carrier with assistance from the Federal Aviation Administration, Van Nuys Airport, Burbank Airport, Los Angeles International Airport and the U.S. Air Force, the fire department said.