Priest, 2 Passengers Die in Plane Crash : Accident: The three men were returning to Fullerton from Corona after dark when the craft went down in the Chino Hills area.

A pilot-priest and two other men were killed when their single-engine plane crashed in fog-shrouded darkness in the brush-covered Chino Hills area, San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputies said Thursday.

The plane carrying Father Luis Alfonso Tomich, 59, fellow pilot Willie Rosslier and mechanic George Bernal crashed and started a small brush fire that was quickly extinguished by firefighters Wednesday night. But the wreckage of the aircraft was not discovered until Thursday morning when California Department of Forestry personnel returned to the fire scene for mop-up operations.

The bodies of all three men were found in the charred debris of the Cessna 172.

Msgr. John Moretta, pastor of the Resurrection Parish in East Los Angeles where Tomich served as associate pastor, said the three men had flown from Fullerton Airport to Corona for lunch on Wednesday and apparently were on their way home after dark “when something went wrong.”

Federal Aviation Administration officials said the cause of the crash had not been determined.

Tomich had never lost his enthusiasm for flying even though he was severely disfigured as a young man by burns he suffered on his hands and face in the crash of his light plane in the mountains of his native Colombia, according to Moretta.

Ordained as a priest before coming to the United States, Tomich joined the Los Angeles Diocese about 20 years ago, serving first at Sacred Heart Church in Pomona, then at Holy Family Church in Glendale and later at St. Linus Parish in Norwalk.

While serving in Norwalk in 1978, Tomich was arraigned on charges that he flew three illegal aliens from Tecate, Baja California, to Fullerton Airport in his plane.

Affidavits filed by Immigration and Naturalization Service agents stated that Tomich told them he had brought aliens into this country under similar circumstances “on at least six other occasions.”

Records indicating the final disposition of the case were not immediately available Thursday, but Moretta said he believed Tomich was released within 24 hours and that the charges against him eventually were dropped.

Long interested in Latin American affairs, Tomich led a special service at St. Basil’s church in Los Angeles on Aug. 31, 1989, to pray for peace in his violence-torn homeland.

“Peace is not something that just arrives from heaven,” he told the congregation that night. “We have to work for it.”

Moretta said his associate, who came to Resurrection church last January, had a continuing commitment to the preservation of the environment, maintaining an active membership in the Sierra Club and urging parishioners to respect the natural world around them.