2 Bodies Recovered From Plane Crash

The fourth seat on the Cessna had been for Brian Williams.

But the 27-year-old financial advisor was delayed at work and missed joining his three friends for a sightseeing flight over Santa Monica Bay.

His friends never returned.

On Tuesday, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department divers retrieved the mangled wreckage and the bodies of two crash victims in 75 feet of water a mile off Topanga State Beach. The victims’ families had hired a private salvage company, which found the aircraft Monday, after authorities gave up searching for survivors after the March 28 crash.

“I was supposed to be on that plane,” Williams said. His roommate, Carlos Sheppard, was aboard. “Why him and not me?”

Rescue crews had largely abandoned hope of finding the wreckage of the four-seat plane. The aircraft, rented from Justice Aviation in Santa Monica, was piloted by Lionel Russell Jr., 33 of Dallas. Aboard were Sheppard, of Los Angeles, and Evelyn Cedeno, 30, who was visiting from Brooklyn, N.Y.

Rescue crews found Cedeno’s body the night of the crash, floating about three miles from where they would later find the wreckage. They found no sign of Russell or Sheppard, and thus began long days of waiting and wondering for a dozen or so relatives and friends who flew to Los Angeles from across the country.

“I’m just upset it took 12 days. Twelve days,” said Maurice Baudy, 27, an accountant who lives in Atlanta and was a longtime friend of Sheppard.

A joint search by sheriff’s deputies, the Coast Guard and the Los Angeles County Fire Department failed to locate the wreckage. The National Transportation Safety Board examines debris from private plane accidents but does not conduct searches for lost wreckage, NTSB officials said.

When a private plane crashes into the ocean, it is not clear what public agency, if any, is responsible for finding the wreckage, said NTSB investigator Wayne Pollack.

“Every time there’s an airplane crash on land, for example, there’s an agency responsible for conducting the search,” Pollack said. “It’s a little bit different in water. You have issues--are you in city, county or federal water? Until you know where the airplane is, you don’t know which agency is heading [the investigation] up.

Frustrated that investigators had been unable to locate the victims’ bodies, family members last week hired a marine salvage company.

Sea Tow, a company that calls itself “the AAA of the water,” rented sophisticated sonar equipment from out of state. The crew worked alongside sheriff’s divers on Monday.

Sea Tow crew members found the wreckage late Monday, after searching for two days, said Sea Tow’s Chuck Myers. The firm typically charges $7,000 for such operations, he said, but for this job he charged for only the costs of equipment and labor.

Sea Tow employees, sheriff’s divers and Coast Guard officials returned to the wreckage early Tuesday. The Russell and Sheppard families waited for news at a nearby hotel.

By midday, sheriff’s divers had retrieved two bodies, believed to be those of Russell and Sheppard. The bodies were transferred to the Los Angeles County coroner for identification and autopsies, said sheriff’s spokesman Deputy Alba Harrison.

To bring the wreckage to the surface, sheriff’s investigators attached dozens of small flotation devices to the metal and inflated the devices with air, Harrison said. They transferred the wreckage to NTSB investigators in San Pedro, Harrison said.

“When that airplane came up, it was shredded in a million pieces,” said Myers, who observed the retrieval Tuesday. “It was the worst thing I had ever seen,” Myers said. “It looked like scrap.”

County lifeguard spokesman Patrick Jones said the sheriff’s sonar equipment “was not sensitive enough to pick up on the wreckage.”

Myers said only a private company can afford the more sensitive equipment. “It’s extraordinarily expensive--$20,000 to $60,000,” he said.

Such problems frustrated the families of victims who waited anxiously for news, and complained publicly about getting scant information.

“We were given the runaround,” Williams said.

Only now, nearly two weeks after the rented plane went down, Williams and other friends and family can begin to make burial arrangements.

Williams said he can settle his roommate’s bank accounts and complete paperwork with his employer. And now, he said, Sheppard’s family can bury his friend.

“What this closure does for us, it gives us the opportunity to pick up the pieces,” he said. “To have that closure is vital for sanity. To begin the healing process.”