Search Continues for a 3rd Victim in Plane Crash

Divers continued to search Wednesday for a third victim of a Christmas Day plane crash off San Onofre State Beach that killed an Inglewood woman and critically injured the pilot, authorities reported.

Coroner’s investigators in San Diego identified the dead woman as Celine Muhammad, 29, whose body was found floating in the ocean about 600 yards from the south end of San Onofre.

U.S. Coast Guard officials said the pilot was Jamul Muhammad, 26, of Los Angeles. He remained in critical condition Wednesday at Scripps Memorial Hospital in La Jolla, where he was admitted with severe hypothermia.

Authorities could not confirm whether the two people were related.

Search and rescue divers from the Camp Pendleton Marine Corps Base on Wednesday located the wreckage of the Cessna 172, which apparently crash-landed into the sea about 3:15 p.m. Tuesday and flipped over.

The single-engine plane had taken off from McClellan-Palomar Airport near Carlsbad and was headed to Hawthorne Airport. Authorities said a third person was believed to be aboard the four-seat Cessna, but divers failed to find anyone in the wreckage Wednesday.

A cause for the crash has not been determined, said Howard Plagens, a National Transportation Safety Board investigator. The NTSB, which is investigating, is still attempting to recover the wreckage and obtain air traffic radar records from the Federal Aviation Administration.