DIRECT HIT

Jet Hits Homes Near San Diego Killing Multiple People

The private Cessna 550 came down around 3:45 a.m. in the north east of San Diego in foggy, low-visibility conditions.

A plane has crashed into multiple homes in a residential area of San Diego, setting at least 15 homes on fire. Assistant Fire Department Chief Dan Eddy said multiple people in the aircraft had been killed but did not confirm how many. The plane can hold up to 10 people. No one on the ground was injured, he said. The small aircraft had made a “direct hit to multiple homes” leaving “jet fuel all over the place” in the Murphy Canyon neighborhood in the north east of the city, CNN reported. The crash forced the evacuation of several nearby blocks. “Our main goal is to search all these homes and get everybody out right now,” Eddy said. Air traffic controllers said the plane was a private Cessna 550, commonly used for small groups of six to eight people, and that it came down around 3:45 a.m. near Montgomery Executive Airport during a period of extremely low visibility. Flight tracking website FlightAware showed the plane took off from New York City on Wednesday evening and stopped in Wichita, Kansas, before flying on to San Diego. It was not immediately clear who was on board or whether there were any injuries. The National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Association both opened investigations into the crash.