2 Die as Plane Explodes in Corona Crash : Accident: Craft narrowly misses children and parents at Little League game. A 6-year-old is only slightly hurt when apparatus she is climbing on is demolished.

A single-engine plane exploded and crashed in a fireball in a busy public park next to Corona Municipal Airport on Saturday afternoon, scattering debris and killing the pilot and his passenger, authorities said.

After clipping a two-story manufacturing building, the two-seat Beech aircraft crashed at 2:45 p.m. in Butterfield Park, just 50 to 100 feet from children and parents watching a Little League baseball game.

But officials said the only injury reported on the ground was sustained by a 6-year-old girl, whose left leg was grazed, possibly by flying pieces of debris. The wood-and-metal climbing apparatus she was playing on was demolished.

“How she just got nicked with minor injuries is amazing,” Police Sgt. Tim Payne said.

The girl, who was not identified, was taken to Corona Municipal Hospital, where she was treated and released to her parents, he said.

Authorities were trying Saturday to confirm identifications for the crash victims. One of the two men is thought to be about 45 years old. Dental information will probably be needed to confirm the identity of the other man, Deputy Riverside County Coroner Rick Bogan said.

The cause is under investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration’s Riverside district office. Police said about 75 people witnessed the accident.

FAA spokesman Fred O’Donnell said the agency has no record of what the pilot was trying to do because the aircraft was operating on visual flight rules, which do not involve a flight plan, and the airport does not have a traffic control tower.

Sgt. Payne said the plane lost a wheel on the runway when the pilot was trying either to land, take off or practice touch-and-go maneuvers.

Witnesses said the plane, painted white with blue-and-red trim, then made a U-turn in the air and headed south of the airport, where it began to dip and rise in a bumping fashion.

“It looked real low in the sky,” said Corona resident Pat Thrasher, 41. “It was trying to go higher but was losing altitude. I was terrorized that the kids might get hurt.” He was in the park to watch his son pitch a baseball game.

The plane grazed a building southeast of the airport and exploded in the air before it crashed, split into several pieces and burst into flames near a grove of trees, witnesses said.

Authorities said an off-duty firefighter and his wife, a registered nurse, pulled one of the men out of the wreckage and tried unsuccessfully to revive him with cardiopulmonary resuscitation.