Plane Crash That Killed 2 Under Investigation

Investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board on Sunday were looking into the cause of the plane crash in the mountains north of Ventura that killed two Huntington Beach teenagers, a spokesman for the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department said.

Officials for the federal agency could not be reached for comment.

Tyson Stearns and his best friend, Erik Lind, both 18, rented a small plane Friday and flew--with Lind, a licensed pilot, at the controls--to Santa Ynez to lunch with Stearns’ grandmother. Before heading home, they stopped in Santa Barbara to see a mutual friend.

All went well until the final leg, when sometime after lifting off in foggy darkness from Santa Barbara’s airport Friday night, the plane crashed into the rugged mountains north of Ventura.

Stearns’ mother, Gail Stearns, human resources manager at St. Jude Medical Center in Fullerton, said the two friends had flown together before without incident.

She said the family became concerned late Friday when her son did not return as scheduled. The crash site was discovered about 9:45 a.m. Saturday after the family spent a sleepless night worrying.

Investigators found the plane about the time Sterns normally would have been out on a golf course with his father, an adult education teacher in the ABC Unified School District in Cerritos, she said.

Stearns was a freshman at Orange Coast College, although his plans for the future were still uncertain, the mother said.

“He was one of those undecideds,” she said. “He just wanted to get his [associate’s degree] first, then transfer. Or maybe decide school wasn’t for him and maybe join the Air Force, or the Navy.”

She said her son worked at a local Lucky’s supermarket for two years and recently had earned his second promotion in customer service in the meat department.

“He called in sick one day out of the two years,” she said.