Pilot Dies After Plane Grazes Santee Homes

A single-engine plane crashed into a hillside in Santee early Friday morning, grazing two homes and narrowly missing another before skidding into a cluster of trees and bursting into flames.

The plane’s pilot, 62-year-old Orlyn Lee Jones, died instantly in the crash, emergency workers said. No one else was reported injured.

The crash, which occurred shortly before 6 a.m., left a scattering of debris around the residential neighborhood less than a mile west of Gillespie Field. Santee firefighters said the plane’s propeller smashed into a shed more than 200 yards from the point of impact.

“Luckily, no one on the ground was hurt,” said Santee Fire Chief George Tockstein. “The plane was totaled.”

Fred and Mary Guglielmetti were among the lucky. The Beechcraft 836 lopped off the television antenna atop their house, in the 8800 block of Brandon Way, and the force of the crash apparently caused a sliding glass door to shatter just a few feet from the spot where Fred Guglielmetti was standing in the kitchen.

The crash left the Guglielmettis’ patio littered with broken glass and one of the plane’s wing tips, in addition to two chips in the stone wall of the house.

“It sounded like a jet to me--about 6 feet over my head,” Guglielmetti said.

Engine trouble was tentatively identified as the cause of the crash, and several residents said they heard sputtering engine noises just before the plane hit.

“It’s a sound that you guys won’t ever forget,” resident Dawn Rogers told her neighbors as they examined the debris.

According to sheriff’s deputies, the plane barely cleared Rogers’ house, also in the 8800 block of Brandon Way, before grazing a house on Dobyns Drive and then plowing into the hillside.

The plane left a gaping hole in the roof of the Dobyns Drive home, but the family living there escaped without injury.

Longtime Santee resident Harriette Wade, the owner of the grove where the plane came to rest, said she was preparing to go outside to feed her horses when she heard the noise in her back yard.

“When I heard the explosion, I just thought, ‘What the hell has hit me now?’ ” said Wade, who has lived on the farm since 1944. “It was a real loud explosion. It sounded like it hit my house.”

Firefighters from Santee, El Cajon, Lakeside and San Diego were on the scene in a matter of minutes, Tockstein said.

“The fire was extinguished very quickly,” Tockstein said. “The fire was out in five or six minutes.”

Mary Guglielmetti, Fred’s wife, watched the blaze from a window in her home.

“I just saw a ball of light,” she said. “I could see the redness of the fire.”

The crash damaged several trees near Wade’s house and destroyed a shed she used to store equipment for her horses.

One of the horses apparently injured itself in a panicked response to the explosion, Wade said.

The incident did not come as a surprise to people in a neighborhood where planes traveling to and from Gillespie Field frequently pass overhead.

“When you live this close to an airport, this happens,” Rogers said. “I just hope we get the funds to move.”

The pilot Jones, who lived in the 1600 block of Hacienda Drive in El Cajon, left Gillespie bound for Barstow on a business trip, his daughter Roberta Haley said.

Jones apparently tried to return to the airfield when his engine failed, coroner’s Deputy Ken Bell said.

Haley, 34, said her father had been flying most of his life and had never been involved in an accident before.

“He had been flying since he was 17 years old,” Haley said. “He was a wonderful pilot. He was very careful.”

Jeff Reynolds, an investigator for the Federal Aviation Administration, said the air traffic control tower at Gillespie was not open when the accident occurred.

“It would appear that the pilot was giving his best effort to avoid all the structures around here,” Gillespie flight instructor Robert Moore said as he surveyed the accident scene. “He did a magnificent job, didn’t he?”

Although some residents like Rogers were thinking about leaving their hillside homes to avoid future accidents, others planned to stay put.

“I don’t mind it at all,” said Mary Guglielmetti, a 15-year resident of the neighborhood. “I’m a die-hard.”

Wade expressed a similar sentiment.

“I’ve said repeatedly, ‘It’s going to happen someday,’ ” she said. “I’m part of Santee--I’m not likely to leave.”