Newport Beach : Floating Body Hints of 3rd Person in Plane

One of two bodies found in the submerged wreckage of an airplane was “loose in the cabin,” suggesting that a third person had been aboard, a spokesman for the club that leased the plane said Thursday.

Craig Swanson of the Flying Club suggested Wednesday that because the woman’s body was not found in the plane’s passenger seat, as reported earlier, it was more likely that three people were in the plane.

Investigators still are exploring the possibility that Kevin Eisiminger, a 30-year-old student pilot and club member, was in the plane before it plunged into the sea early Tuesday off Newport Beach. Eisiminger, who Swanson said had flown the Cessna 152 on Sunday, was still missing Thursday. His car was found near the plane’s tie-down area at John Wayne Airport.

“She was not strapped in her seat,” Swanson said Thursday of the woman’s body. “That seems very important because it puts the girl in the cargo area.

“Just hypothesizing here, if the right (plane) door is intact, then that means (the victims) didn’t get outside . . . and no one would have been thrown out of there. If it was the right door that tore off, then it’s possible somebody else got out,” Swanson said. “But if the girl was in back (in the cargo area behind the two seats), you have to ask yourself why she was there.”

Swanson and other Flying Club members met Wednesday night with National Transportation and Safety Board investigator Alan Crawford, who Swanson said told them that the body of Sandra L. O’Grady was not found in the passenger seat, as the Orange County Sheriff’s Department reported Tuesday. “The NTSB guy (Crawford) told us her body was loose in the cabin,” Swanson said.

Crawford took Thursday off and could not be reached for comment.

Divers from the Sheriff’s Harbor Patrol and from the Newport Beach lifeguard detachment found the bodies of O’Grady, 25, and Richard Brownell, 27, in the submerged plane cockpit, both of them still strapped to their seats, authorities said Tuesday

Lt. Dick Olson, Sheriff’s Department spokesman, said Thursday that the department has no reason to believe that its earlier information was incorrect.