Lawyer May Be Pilot Who Died in Crash

A Newport Beach attorney is believed to have been the fatally injured pilot of a twin-engine private plane that took off from John Wayne Airport and later slammed into a ridge and exploded in southern Alameda County, authorities said Tuesday.

The pilot was tentatively identified as a 43-year-old woman, and her husband has been told of the crash, said Cheryl Gibbs, a supervising deputy coroner for Alameda County.

But Gibbs would not release the woman’s name because positive identification of the pilot’s body had not been made. Experts were working Tuesday night with dental records trying to conclusively establish the woman’s identity, Gibbs said.

Descending through dense fog, the Cessna, flying at 1,000 feet, crashed into the ridge above the Castlewood Country Club late Monday morning. The Federal Aviation Administration reported that the pilot received repeated warnings that she was flying too low.

Sheriff’s Deputy Lou Losano said the plane, with apparently only the pilot aboard, had taken off at 9 a.m. and vanished from radar screens at 11:21 a.m.

The woman who filed the flight plan was Barbara Gellman of Orange County, according to Norm Hopkins of the Riverside Flight Service Station, where the plan was filed on Sunday evening. Gellman had said she planned to fly to Oakland, according to Hopkins. The Alameda County coroner’s office said it cannot positively determine whether Gellman is the victim until identification is complete.

Visibility at the time of the crash was about three-quarters of a mile, the FAA said.

“All the engines were screaming. He (sic) came down low and my friend said he (the pilot) isn’t going to make it, and boom, it exploded,” said Mike Souza of Pleasanton, who was working on a house on Castlewood Drive.

The disoriented pilot, flying in a thickening fog, ignored three warnings from Oakland Airport controllers that she was flying too low, the FAA indicated.

The collision left an impact crater in a steep, rugged ravine northwest of the end of Castlewood Drive, said Sgt. Dave Hoig of the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department.

“There is not much left of the plane,” he said.

“It took us like 5 hours to find the plane, it was so foggy there,” Losano said. “After it got dark, it was totally unsafe. We couldn’t even get a four-wheel-drive in that area. So we left people there during the night.”

The searchers were hampered by visibility that cut to 5 feet at times, they reported.

Witnesses reported hearing the aircraft, with the whine of accelerating engines, flying low over homes in Castlewood before the aircraft crashed and exploded.

Sandy Chleboun of Grass Valley and her friend, Julie Brown of Pleasanton, were playing golf on the Castlewood golf course.

“You could hear the plane go over, and you could hear it slam,” she said.

More than 25 searchers from the sheriff’s volunteer rescue squad, Pleasanton Fire Department, the California Department of Forestry and the East Bay Regional Park District looked for the aircraft.

The pilot was declared dead at the scene.

According to FAA spokesman Fred O’Donnell, the pilot asked Oakland air-traffic controllers for assistance while approaching the Oakland Airport.

Controllers warned her three times that she was flying too low. She acknowledged just one of those warnings before dropping from controllers’ radar screens.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.