Small Plane Crashes Off Seal Beach Pier; Man Killed, Pilot Hurt

The pilot of a single-engine plane that crashed off the Seal Beach Pier was rescued Sunday, but divers found the body of a passenger trapped in the submerged wreckage of the aerobatic aircraft, authorities said.

The pilot, Charles Mahan, 56, of Los Angeles, was treated for minor injuries at Los Alamitos Medical Center and released, a hospital official said. The body of the passenger, identified as 50-year-old John Therieau of Westlake Village, was found in the cockpit about five hours later.

“The pilot managed to extricate himself from the aircraft and was rescued by a private vessel,” Orange County Sheriff’s Lt. Larry Richey said.

Mahan told investigators that he tried unsuccessfully to rescue Therieau, said Wayne Pollack, air safety investigator for the National Transportation Safety Bureau.

The pilot was quickly transferred to a Sheriff’s Harbor Patrol boat and taken to the Seal Beach Pier, where he was met by paramedics and taken to the hospital.

The two-seater Citabria crashed into the sea about a mile southeast of the pier at 12:54 p.m. Sunday and sank in 45 feet of water near Chevron’s Oil Island Esther and the north jetty of Anaheim Bay as the city was celebrating its 70th anniversary, officials said.

Fishermen on the pier saw the crash and notified Chris Barth, an employee at the pier tackle shop, who reported the accident to Seal Beach lifeguards, authorities said.

“Chris ran out and saw the plane sinking in the water, then called the lifeguards,” said Darin DenOs, an employee at Seal Beach Pleasure Fishing and Tackle shop. “Nobody seems to have seen it flying around or having trouble at all.”

Simultaneously, several pleasure boaters off Seal Beach radioed for help when they saw the high-wing monoplane hit the water, Richey said.

The Orange County Sheriff’s Harbor Patrol coordinated the rescue effort with help from the U.S. Coast Guard, Long Beach Marine Safety officers and Seal Beach lifeguards.

Divers found the plane in 45 feet of water at 5:26 p.m., Richey said. The body of the passenger was found in the cockpit at 6 p.m. and brought to the surface a short time later. A Coast Guard official said divers were hampered in their search by murky waters that allowed only five-foot visibility.

The wreckage remained on the ocean floor Sunday night with a buoy tied to it to mark its location, pending an investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration into the cause of the accident.

The coroner’s office will conduct an autopsy.

Mahan, owner of the Citabria, took off from Compton Airport at 12:35 p.m. Sunday with Therieau, an acquaintance. Pollack said they were headed offshore to watch sailboats.

A small plane had been seen skimming coastal waters in the vicinity of the pier about an hour earlier, according to Long Beach Marine Safety officers. However, authorities could not confirm that the sunken aircraft was the same plane.

Petty Officer Tom Heflick of the Coast Guard base in Long Beach said a Coast Guard helicopter and the 82-foot cutter Point Divide aided in the search.

The Citabria--or ‘airbatic’ spelled backwards--is a light-weight, high-wing monoplane designed for aerobatic maneuvering. The first Citabrias were built in 1964 by Bellanca Aircraft Corp. Texas-based Champion Aircraft Co. Inc. bought the manufacturing rights and began producing the airplane in 1984.