2 Die as Plane Crashes in Mountains
The bodies of two Orange County dentists were discovered Saturday after their single-engine plane crashed into a mountain in Kern County in a storm.
Pilot Jean Paquette, 47, of Anaheim, and passenger Claude Caperton, 56, of Brea, were flying over the Tehachapi range on the way from Chino to Bakersfield on Friday afternoon, when wind forced the plane down, said Bob Fowler of the Civil Air Patrol.
“The pilot radioed that he was getting a down draft pulling him down at 200 feet a minute,” Fowler said. “He got out of it and pulled up to 6,000 feet, then hit another down draft.”
At 3:25 p.m., Fowler said, the aircraft, a Cessna 182, fell to 5,700 feet and disappeared from the radar screen at a Bakersfield airport.
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