2 Survive Crash of Plane Into Lemon Orchard

A pilot and his passenger barely walked away after the small, home-built single-engine airplane they flew crashed Tuesday afternoon in a lemon orchard in the Santa Rosa Valley, just east of Camarillo.

The pilot of the four-seat Lancair IV experimental aircraft, 61-year-old Leon Roger Richards of Simi Valley, radioed a distress call at 4:47 p.m., 10 minutes after taking off from Camarillo Airport. He then lost contact with air traffic controllers.

After rapidly losing altitude, the red-and-white plane clipped several trees, bounced, and flipped over on its roof, strewing debris along a 100-yard path and shearing off its tail. The aircraft’s retractable landing gear was still up.

John Lamb, an owner of the property where the plane crashed, near Santa Rosa Road and Hilltop Lane, was outside when Richards’ plane came down.

“He was coming in in a bank and looked like he was going down--and he did,” Lamb said. “It looked like he had power, but he didn’t have much.”

Both Richards and his passenger--Randolph Flores, 45, of Simi Valley--had crawled out of the plane by the time the ambulance arrived, Lamb said.

“They were barely walking and [the pilot] went down and stayed down,” Lamb said. “One of the ambulance guys . . . asked how he got out and he said he didn’t know.”

Richards was airlifted to Columbia-Los Robles Hospital/Medical Center in Thousand Oaks, where he was listed in fair but stable condition after being admitted to the hospital’s intensive-care unit.

Flores, who suffered a head wound, was taken by ambulance to St. John’s Pleasant Valley Hospital in Camarillo, where he was expected to be treated and released Tuesday night.

Officials from the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board are investigating the cause of crash, but were unavailable for comment Tuesday night.

Correspondent Nick Green contributed to this story.