2 Teens Killed in Plane Accident

Two Orange County teenagers, headed home after flying up the coast to visit relatives and friends, were killed early Saturday when their single-engine plane slammed into the rugged hills north of Ventura, officials said.

The crash occurred shortly after midnight when their Cessna 152, flown by 18-year-old Erik Marshall Lind, struck a hill one-half mile north of Emma Wood State Beach, Ventura County Sheriff’s Senior Deputy Harold Hanley said.

Lind and Tyson Michael Stearns, 18, both of Huntington Beach, were declared dead about 9:45 a.m. Saturday, according to the Ventura County medical examiner’s office. The two were best friends and 1999 graduates of Edison High School, said Skip Lind, the teenager’s father.

“They both had everything going for them,” Lind said. “They were square shooters. [My son] was everything you could ask for in a son.”

Like his father, who has been a commercial pilot for 32 years, the younger Lind dreamed of flying for a living. At 17, he obtained his pilot’s license and had flown more than 120 hours, his father said.

“He had his sights set on being a pilot,” Lind said. “He was very determined. We had flown a lot together. He was a good pilot.”

The teens began their journey from John Wayne Airport on Friday morning, the coroner’s office said. They first flew to the Santa Ynez area to visit Stearns’ grandmother. Then they flew to Santa Barbara to see one of their high school buddies, Skip Lind said.

Lind and Stearns were part of a tightknit group of high school athletes who remained close after they all enrolled in different colleges. Lind was a freshman with an undeclared major at Cal State Long Beach. Stearns was a freshman at Orange Coast College, according to Ventura County Senior Deputy Coroner Craig Stevens.

The rental plane left Santa Barbara Airport at 10:26 p.m. Friday, heading back to John Wayne Airport, Federal Aviation Administration officials said. Although the cause of the crash is not yet known, Hanley said the weather conditions probably created low visibility. Lind appeared to be trying to turn the airplane, Hanley said.

“According to the rudders and the position of the plane, it looked like they were in the turning motion,” he said. “They apparently ran into fog, decided it wasn’t such a good idea to fly, tried to turn around and didn’t make it.”

The visibility in Santa Barbara at 10:30 p.m. Friday was four miles, and there were low clouds and haze, according to Weather Data Inc., which provides forecasts to The Times.

Local authorities said they did not know about the crash until the Santa Barbara Sheriff’s Department picked up an aviation beacon signal at 8 a.m. Saturday. They then contacted the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department, which immediately dispatched a helicopter and a search and rescue team.

At 9:15 a.m., searchers located the crash site and discovered Lind. After notifying his father, the search team was informed that there also was a passenger. They returned to the site, where they found Stearns’ body, sheriff’s officials said. The plane was fairly intact after the crash, Hanley said.

The teenagers’ deaths appeared to be caused by “blunt force impact wounds to the whole body as a result of the impact of the mountain,” Stevens said.

Lind’s family expected him home around 1 a.m. His father was not immediately worried when he did not return on time. Stearns’ family could not be reached Saturday.

“It was a Friday night, and he’s a teenager,” the grief-stricken father said Saturday. “But then time passed and we got a call from Tyson’s mother. She was concerned. We were worried too. I was up all night.”

At Edison High, Lind played water polo and was on the swim team. During his summer breaks, he worked as a lifeguard on Huntington Beach. But it was flying that was Lind’s love. He had recently flown his younger sister to Palm Springs to take her shopping at an outlet mall.

“He just enjoyed his life,” his father said, his eyes red. “All he wanted was to be a pilot.”

Times Community News reporter Holly Wolcott contributed to this report.