Relative Seek Help Finding Downed Plane With 3 Aboard

Relatives of a Ventura County couple and their daughter, missing since their plane left Utah for California nearly two weeks ago, have mounted a massive search for the trio and are offering a reward for information on their whereabouts.

The Beechcraft Bonanza carrying K. Reed Harrison, his wife, Judith, and the couple’s youngest daughter, 18-year-old Julie, has been missing since July 25, when it failed to arrive at Camarillo Airport. The plane had taken off from Roosevelt, Utah, where the Harrisons attended a family reunion.

Hundreds of volunteers from the Civil Air Patrol are searching the mountainous terrain in Nevada and Utah as well as the high deserts of Arizona and California for the plane.

At a news conference at the family’s Thousand Oaks home, daughter Kathleen Harrison, 24, said she and her older sister Christina, 25, were in Las Vegas this week distributing flyers to hikers, campers and others traveling in the desert and mountain areas along Interstate 15 urging them to look for any signs of a downed aircraft.

Harrison said she and her sister chartered a helicopter to scour a wooded area near Las Vegas, and also took a psychic up in a plane to help in the search.

A family friend has offered a $5,000 reward for any information on the whereabouts of the plane.

Officials from the Civil Air Patrol said radar data suggests the plane may have gone down in California. The patrol picked up radar tracks near the California-Nevada border at the time the Harrison plane was scheduled to be flying through, said Capt. Ray Tippo of the Civil Air Patrol.

Reed Harrison, a veteran pilot who has made the trip to Roosevelt as many as 50 times, did not file a flight plan, authorities said.