Sherman Oaks Doctor Dies in Plane Crash

A Sherman Oaks doctor was killed when his small private plane, spewing black smoke from its tail, clipped a power line and nose-dived into a Fullerton home Tuesday, engulfing the unoccupied house in flames.

Neighbors and children who had spent the warm day paddling in wading pools watched in horror as the plane’s fuel tank exploded and firefighters battled flames for nearly an hour.

The fiery accident--the 28th at or near Fullerton Municipal Airport since 1985--followed reports of an open door on the aircraft and a mayday call from the pilot before the Beechcraft Debonaire dropped onto the home near the intersection of Courtney and Ash avenues.

The four-seat plane, built in 1984, was registered to Sherman Oaks physician William Garvin Lofton. Orange County coroner’s officials had not identified the pilot as of late Tuesday night. But friends who rallied to the Lofton family’s side confirmed that preliminary findings by the coroner’s office indicated he was aboard the plane.

Investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board sifted through the charred remains of the craft Tuesday afternoon, but authorities said they were unsure what caused the crash.

A woman who rented the home was away eating lunch in her car when she heard about the crash on her radio. Worried for her two dogs, Renee Scandura raced home.

“I had a feeling it was my house,” Scandura, 30, said, surveying the burned wreckage. She found her black Labrador, Fred, safe in the backyard. Animal control later returned terrier Tess unharmed after the animal had bolted.

In Sherman Oaks, family members and friends gathered at the Lofton home Tuesday night.

“He was a wonderful man,” said Beverly Lofton, who was married to William Lofton for more than 12 years.

His Passions Were His Daughter and Flying

Carol Hartmann, a neighbor, said Lofton, an obstetrician who worked for Kaiser Permanente in Panorama City, had flown to Fullerton to visit his daughter’s godfather.

“He came across as being rough on the outside, but had a heart of gold,” Hartmann said.

Jocelyn Smith, a longtime friend, described “Billy” Lofton as a gregarious family man who loved to tease his friends. But his passions, she said, were his 11-year-old daughter and flying.

“He really liked to fly, and it’s ironic that this is the way it had to happen,” she said. “He’s a really safe flier and he knew what he was doing.”

Hal Potter, a neighbor since the Loftons moved into the Royal Woods area of Sherman Oaks in the mid-1980s, said he found in Lofton a fellow aviation enthusiast.

“He was very knowledgeable about aviation. . . . He knew about all the latest models and even the fighter planes,” Potter said. “He was a nice, quiet guy who loved his family.”

Witnesses saw smoke trailing the low-flying plane shortly after the plane took off from Fullerton Municipal Airport.

The aircraft was seen flying low, about 100 feet over the Buena Park Police Department building, just before the crash. The plane should have been flying at 1,100 feet, airport officials said.

Moments later, the pilot radioed an emergency broadcast, telling airport officials of an “open-door problem but declining to report an emergency,” according to Federal Aviation Administration officials.

But it is unlikely an open door would have caused the crash, airport officials said. “One open door is not a significant event,” said Rod Propst, manager of the Fullerton airport. “You just go back to the airport and shut the door.”

Experiencing problems, the pilot tried to turn the plane back toward the airport, but its tail caught an electric power line about three-quarters of a mile southeast of the runway, city officials said.

While the cause of the crash remains under investigation, Tuesday’s fiery scene in a normally tranquil neighborhood is likely to renew complaints of safety problems surrounding the airport.

In 1995, a small airplane nose-dived into a Fullerton townhouse complex, killing both men aboard the aircraft and a resident sleeping in her apartment.

Propst defended the facility’s safety record, saying that the airport sees 200 to 250 successful operations--including takeoffs and landings--every day.

But some Southern Californians who live near other local airfields worry about the possibility of air crashes in their neighborhoods.

Ted McConkey, a former Burbank City Councilman and a longtime critic of Burbank Airport, said the Fullerton accident underscores the inherent danger of air fields in urban communities.

“There’s not a lot you can do,” McConkey said. “It’s like automobile accidents. Studies show that most occur close to your home. It’s the same with airports. . . . If you have a lot of small planes, the odds go up of incidents like this.”

Air Crashes in the Suburbs

Since 1981, three fatal accidents have occurred at Burbank Airport involving private planes, killing nine people, an airport official said.

There also have been a number of crashes at other San Fernando Valley airports. At the Van Nuys airport there have been 18 aviation accidents, resulting in a total of eight deaths. In that same period at Whiteman Airport in Pacoima, there have been nine accidents with a total of six fatalities.

Several people in two Pacoima homes escaped injury in September 1997 when a small plane on a training exercise crashed just after takeoff from Whiteman Airport. But two people in the plane were killed and a third was seriously injured. The NTSB found that a mechanic had given wrong instructions to the pilot on positioning a fuel switch.

That crash was the sixth in the neighborhood within an 18-month period and prompted Los Angeles city and county officials to call for an investigation into safety issues involving the airport.

The neighborhoods that surround busy Santa Monica Municipal Airport--Mar Vista, Venice, Santa Monica and West Los Angeles--have experienced at least 12 crashes and seven fatalities since 1985. And at Long Beach Airport, eight people have been killed in four crashes during the last 15 years.

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Times staff writers Meg James, Scott Martelle, Martha Willman, Andrew Blankstein and correspondents Greg Risling and Luladey B. Tadesse contributed to this report.