Plane Lands at Stadium, Hits Van; 1 Hurt

A single-engine plane made an emergency landing in the parking lot of Anaheim Stadium on Saturday, slamming into a van with a woman and three small children inside, police said.

The van’s driver, Maureen C. Salfrank, 26, of Riverside, was injured in the crash, but the children, her sister’s 5-year-old triplets, were unharmed. The two people in the plane were not hurt.

In an interview from her home Saturday night, Salfrank said she was sore from a neck injury, but relieved to be alive.

She said was terrified as she tried to dodge the aircraft, which seemed to appear out of nowhere.

“Before I knew it, it was coming head-on,” Salfrank said. “I’m still shook up. We were very lucky.”

Salfrank, who works part time as a waitress at the stadium, was driving the van with her nieces and nephew, when she spotted a distressed plane across the empty parking lot.

At this time, “the plane was touching up and down,” she said, so she stopped the van. That was when the plane suddenly came closer, Salfrank said, forcing her to veer the van to the right.

Just before the crash, she said, the plane turned, lifted into the air, and its wing slammed the driver’s side of the van.

The pilot, Oswaldo Fonseca Ismerio, had taken off from Corona Airport in a Piper PA-28 Cherokee and was flying to John Wayne Airport when he ran into trouble above the interchange of the Riverside and Costa Mesa freeways, police said.

Ismerio, 50, of Irvine, told police he was forced to land about 12:30 p.m. after he lost oil pressure above the freeway interchange northeast of the stadium, Anaheim Sgt. Thomas Lahmon said.

As the airplane glided over the stadium, the pilot attempted to land the aircraft on the stadium’s south side and struck the top of Salfrank’s Ford van. The pilot was able to maintain control, and landed the airplane without further incident, police said.

Paramedics treated Salfrank after she complained of having neck pain. She was taken to Kaiser Permanente Hospital-Orange County, where she was treated and released.

Ismerio told police the aircraft’s engine seized after it lost pressure.

The plane was dismantled, put on a truck and taken to John Wayne Airport by Saturday night. A spokesman from the Federal Aviation Administration in Los Angeles said the plane will be inspected once it arrives at the airport.