Aspen Plane Crash Kills 4 O.C. Residents

Four Orange County residents, including the president of a real estate development firm and his wife, were killed Monday when their single-engine airplane slammed into a mountainside while apparently attempting an emergency landing at an airport in Aspen, Colo., authorities said.

Two of the victims were identified as Lawrence Barrett, 43, a Huntington Beach resident and president of Barrett Property Services in Irvine, and his wife, Karolyn, 45.

Also killed was passenger Russell Lind, 52, of Newport Beach, identified as an employee of Executive Benefits Group, a Newport Beach firm.

The fourth victim, a Santa Ana resident, was not identified pending notification of his relatives, Tom Stephenson, patrol director of the Pitkin County Sheriff’s Department, said.

The four were killed when their Cessna 210 airplane crashed shortly after noon about 200 yards from Sardy Field in Aspen, according to Stephenson.

The plane, with its wing mounted over the cabin, “took off and shortly (thereafter) made a 180-degree turn before crashing into a mountainside,” Stephenson said.

Two of the victims were tossed from the plane upon impact; the other two were found in the wreckage.

Air traffic controllers at Sardy Field told sheriff’s investigators that the plane’s pilot did not radio the airport tower to report an emergency before the crash.

Stephenson said investigators found a pilot’s license on the body of Lawrence Barrett and believe that he was at the controls when the plane went down.

Stephenson said the weather was clear when the accident occurred. Investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration will begin investigating the cause of the crash this morning, he said.

It was not immediately known why the four were in the Aspen area.

Lind, who ran an insurance company, “was a very active and well-liked” member of the Balboa Bay Club, said A.J. Jacobson, a neighbor on Pelican Court in Newport Beach.

“He traveled a lot and had a lot of friends,” Jacobson said. “He was very athletic . . . and loved to mountain climb this time of year.”

Times staff writer Matt Lait contributed to this report.