At least two people were killed and 18 injured after a small plane crashed into a commercial building in California, United States on Thursday, the police have said.
The crash took place early in the afternoon near Fullerton Municipal Airport, 25 miles (40 kilometres) southeast of Los Angeles. The cause remains unknown.
“There are two confirmed fatalities,” Fullerton police said on X.
Additionally, 10 people were hospitalized and eight others were treated at the scene.
Investigators do not yet know if the deceased were plane passengers or if they were workers at the building where it crashed, a police officer told local station KTLA.
Television footage showed a gaping hole in the roof of the building, with smoke pouring out.
“All we hear is like a loud noise, boom, and that’s it. Then we started running out of the building,” Jerome Cruz, one of the workers who witnessed said.
The plane was a single-engine Van’s RV-10, a small model with four seats, according to the Federal Aviation Administration, which has opened an investigations.
This incident comes few days on the heels of Jeju Air flight from Seoul on Monday, which was forced to return after encountering a landing gear problem.
Earlier, South Korea’s most deadly plane crash killed 179 people after coming down without its landing gear engaged on Sunday.
Jeju Air Flight 7C101, which departed Seoul’s Gimpo International Airport for Jeju island “at around 6:37 am, returned to Gimpo at 7:25 am” after a landing gear issue was detected shortly after takeoff, the South Korean airline said.
“Shortly after takeoff, a signal indicating a landing gear issue was detected on the aircraft’s monitoring system.”
