4 Agoura Hills Youths Identified as Victims in Crash of Small Plane

Four people killed in a plane crash last weekend in a mountainous region of Santa Barbara County were identified Monday as Agoura Hills youths on a dinner outing.

Douglas Pankratz, 20, Eric Schulz, 20, Julie Hilger, 18, and Kim Allen, 18, left Van Nuys Airport Saturday for a flight to Santa Barbara, according to West Winds Aviation, the Van Nuys-based company that rented the plane to Pankratz Saturday.

Pankratz, a 1989 graduate of Agoura High School with about 75 hours of flying experience, and his passengers were on their way back to the airport when the single-engine Piper Archer slammed into a fog-shrouded hillside in Los Padres National Forest above Carpinteria about 8:50 p.m. The plane exploded and burned completely.

There were no survivors.

Hilger and Allen were seniors at Agoura High School and Schulz graduated with Pankratz from the same school, according to a school official who described the students as “positive and outgoing.”

“This is a tragic loss to the school,” he said.

Allen was an honor student and a member of the student council. She also participated in the school’s theater arts program and was on the mock trial team. Hilger was relatively new to the school.

Pankratz and Schulz were active in the school’s music program, and Schulz was on the baseball team when he was a student.

Officials said Monday that the crash probably was caused by a combination of poor weather and an inexperienced pilot. Patches of fog spotted the area around Point Mugu Saturday night.

Shortly after takeoff from Santa Barbara, Pankratz radioed controllers at Point Mugu Naval Air Station for permission to climb to a higher altitude, which was granted. Three minutes later, the plane disappeared from radar.

The wreckage was found about 8 a.m. Sunday.