Ojai Pilot and Daughter, 10, Are Killed in Plane Crash : Aviation: Cessna plunges to ground just after takeoff from Santa Paula Airport, the area’s sixth fatal wreck in four years. Mechanical failure is suspected.

An Ojai pilot and his 10-year-old daughter were killed early Sunday when their small plane crashed and burned in a dense thicket of brush just west of Santa Paula Airport.

John Forrest Lires, 44, took flight in his blue and yellow Cessna with his younger daughter, Erin, a blossoming child actress, just minutes before the plane experienced engine trouble, authorities and witnesses said.

“It took off from Santa Paula Airport and, about two minutes later, it came down,” Senior Deputy Coroner Dale Zentzis said. “They were killed on impact.”

The single-propeller Cessna 195 plunged to the ground near the end of Shell Road, a narrow dirt road that runs along the north side of the Santa Clara River.

Firefighters extinguished a small brush fire--about one-tenth of an acre--before discovering the pilot’s body and then finding the charred body of the girl, said Sandi Wells of the Ventura County Fire Department.

It was the sixth fatal air crash in four years near the airport, which has no control tower.

Witnesses told investigators that the plane appeared to have mechanical problems moments before it slammed into the brush just north of the mostly dry river about 8:15 a.m.

“I looked up right over the top of those trees and it looked like it was going to make a loop in the air,” said Bill Dujardin, a security guard at an auto parts salvage center off Mission Rock Road outside Santa Paula.

“Then all of the sudden it kind of spun a little bit and, when it straightened up, the motor went ‘boom’ and it hit the ground,” Dujardin said. “It was all a matter of five or six seconds and it was all over with.”

The Ventura County sheriff’s and fire departments, Santa Paula police, the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board dispatched investigators to the crash site Sunday to determine what went wrong.

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Lires, who enjoyed running and other sports, is survived by his wife, Theresa, and another daughter, Windy, 13, coroner’s officials said. He worked as an electrician at Ventura-based Taft Electric Co.

He owned the antique plane in partnership with John Dolan, also of Ojai. Neighbor and family friend Jody Kasch said Lires and Dolan had recently examined the craft thoroughly.

“He was the most conscientious pilot,” said Kasch, adding that Lires had been flying for years.

Lires and his daughter were planning a para-sailing trip Sunday, she said.

Erin, in addition to her budding acting career, was a straight-A student at Summit School and an accomplished horse rider. In addition to roles in local theatrical productions, she has appeared on such television shows as “Quantum Leap” and “Married With Children.” She recently completed work on a television commercial, Kasch said.

The emergency call was received at 8:17 a.m., but it took investigators several minutes to make their way through oil fields and citrus groves to get to the scene, authorities said. A small brush fire was burning in the thicket when they arrived, and the two victims already were dead, coroner’s officials said.

“It’s a real remote location,” Wells said. “It was very difficult to find.”

Investigators said that the plane was not equipped with the instruments required to navigate in inclement weather, and that Lires was not properly licensed to fly in thick fog, such as that which clung to the coastline for much of the morning.

“He was in conditions over his head,” said Cmdr. Mark Hanson of the Santa Paula Police Department, which provided mutual aid to lead investigators. “The airplane was not equipped with all the necessary equipment to legally comply with all of the flight rules.”

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The fatal accident occurred just two weeks after an experimental ultra-light aircraft dropped from the sky shortly after takeoff June 20. Pilot Frank Perry, 72, of Camarillo was killed instantly in that crash.

Four other fatal crashes have occurred in the past several years at or near Santa Paula Airport, a private airfield built by local ranchers in 1930. The tiny airport operates without a control tower because it has no commercial traffic that would require one.

Lires’ Cessna 195 crashed about 15 feet from a series of crude oil and natural gas pipes leased by Crimson Resource Management of Denver, which has operated the above-ground pipelines for several months.

“If they would have hit the lines, it would have been a lot worse,” employee Dave Gangl said as he surveyed the wreckage.

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Times staff writer Peggy Y. Lee contributed to this story.