Single-Engine Plane Crashes; Pilot Is Killed : Aviation: Flight bound from John Wayne Airport to Denver went down on snowy plateau. The three passengers, all of Orange County, were injured.

A single-engine plane bound from Orange County to Denver crashed on a snowy plateau Tuesday, killing the pilot and injuring the three passengers, authorities said.

After the crash, two survivors crawled from the flipped-over plane and one used a cellular telephone to lead rescuers to the crash site about two miles east of Larkspur, 25 miles south of Denver.

“ ‘Our plane has crashed,’ ” Debbie Witt, a communications officer with the Colorado State Patrol, said the caller told her. “I asked him where he was. He had no idea. All he knew was that he was in the mountains.”

The survivors were taken by helicopter and ambulance to Swedish Medical Center and St. Anthony’s Hospital near Denver. The pilot was identified as Steve Trevor. The others were identified as Randy Villadore, 23; Curt Hillman, 24; and Dana Smith, 29, all of Orange County. Smith, who suffered multiple injuries, was listed in critical condition, while Villadore and Hillman were stable.

Officials from the Federal Aviation Administration said the plane had filed a flight plan Tuesday morning from John Wayne Airport to Stapleton in Denver. But later, it was rerouted to Centennial Airport near Larkspur.

“The pilot did indicate he had a problem prior to going down, but we don’t know the nature of the problem,” said Lee Fryer, duty officer for the FAA regional office in Seattle. “He said: ‘I have a field in sight and I’m going in.’ ”

The plane crashed at 1:08 p.m. PST on a plateau with patchy timber and occasional rock outcroppings. Authorities said snow showers were forecast at the time, with fog and visibility of three to five miles and a ceiling of 1,000 feet.

Witt said she was shocked to receive the call from a crash victim. “We handle traffic accidents. We don’t get that stuff here.”

But she said 911 calls on U.S. West Cellular phones wind up with the State Patrol rather than the police. She said she has also received emergency calls from motorists on cellular phones, and one from an avalanche victim.

The caller on Tuesday told her “there were four on board. One said he couldn’t move and had no feeling from the waist down. He said one guy had a broken arm. He said one was not moving.”

She said the caller was upset but not panicky. “He was shaken up, but under control.”

She said that the man on the phone told her that he was on top of a flat plateau, and based on that, the patrol officers were able to locate them.

Swedish Hospital spokeswoman Beatrice Kitchen said the men arrived at the hospital at 4:30 p.m., and she speculated that they had been in the field for two to three hours.

She said doctors would not permit the patients to talk to anyone Tuesday night. “Two of them were conscious and lucid,” Kitchen said. “They were lucid enough to give their names right away.

“They were, of course, extremely upset, very quiet. They knew the condition of the pilot.”

Times staff writer Gebe Martinez contributed to this story.