SAN DIEGO — A small plane crashed in dense fog in a Murphy Canyon neighborhood early Thursday morning, presumably killing all six people onboard, injuring eight people on the ground and burning several cars and homes in military housing.

The plane, a Cessna 550, crashed east of Montgomery-Gibbs Executive Airport around 3:45 a.m., according to the Federal Aviation Administration. The FAA said six people were onboard the Cessna Citation II. San Diego police said late Thursday afternoon that two fatalities have been confirmed, “though the exact number of deceased is still being determined.”

The plane struck a powerline about 2 miles from the airport, according to Elliot Simpson, an investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board. San Diego Gas & Electric confirmed that the initial indication is that its lines had been struck.

Fragments of the aircraft — pieces yet to be be identified — were located underneath the power lines, Simpson said. A wing from the plane was found in the road at the crash scene. Simpson also said its likely the plane had a flight data recorder.

About 100 people were evacuated from the neighborhood. Most of the injured were treated for minor injuries at the evacuation center, but one was taken to a hospital to be treated for smoke inhalation. Officials initially said no one had been injured.

Officials initially said they thought 10 homes had been damaged but later said it was unclear how many had been affected, noting that the crash created a large debris field. Several cars were also burned. Large oil spills stained the road, and the smell of jet fuel hung in the air hours after the crash in the area of Sculpin Street and Santo Road, southeast of Interstate 15 and Aero Drive.

San Diego Fire-Rescue Department Assistant Chief Dan Eddy said during a news conference that crews arrived to find “a plane that had come through this neighborhood” and taken out a home.

“When it hit the street, as the jet fuel went down, it took out every single car that was on both sides of the street,” Eddy said. “You can see that every single car was burning down both sides of the street.”

A burned-out truck, which may have been propelled off the street, sat in front of a home with a gaping hole.

San Diego Police Chief Scott Wahl said about 50 officers were on the scene within minutes.

“I can’t quite put words to describe what this scene looks like, but with the jet fuel going down the street and everything on fire all at once, it was pretty horrific to see the police officers and firefighters to run in there start trying to evacuate people out of the way,” Wahl said. “Doing anything and everything they could to try to save somebody’s life is really heroic.”

Authorities are working to identify the deceased and have not said who they suspect was piloting the plane. The aircraft is registered to an Alaska-based company owned by music agent Dave Shapiro, according to FAA records.

Tributes to Shapiro were pouring in across social media, and word of his connection to the plane was spreading through the music industry.

Shapiro’s agency, Sound Talent Group, issued a statement confirming Shapiro had been killed. The agency told the Associated Press that two other employees were also onboard. Also believed to have been on board was Daniel Williams, the former drummer for Ohio metal band The Devil Wears Prada. Williams had posted several Instagram stories in the hours before the crash showing the Cessna and him in the co-pilot seat next to Shapiro.

Shapiro had been at the Welcome to Rockville festival in Daytona Beach, Fla., last week with several of his bands. His LinkedIn profile said he was certified as an airline transport pilot and owner of small record label Velocity Records.

Shapiro worked for years as a music agent at large Los Angeles firms United Talent Agency and The Agency Group, before co-founding his own San Diego-based agency in 2018, Sound Talent Media.

About 100 residents were evacuated to nearby Miller Elementary School, which was closed Thursday to serve as an evacuation and daycare site. Hancock Elementary was also closed, a San Diego Unified School District spokesperson said.

The Santo Terrace neighborhood, a collection of duplexes that are one and two stories tall in the Murphy Canyon area, is military housing. San Diego Naval Base commander Capt. Robert Healy said the “foremost concern right now is to make sure that we have the safety of our families who reside in the neighborhood.”

Thick fog blanketed the area, creating only about a half-mile of visibility at the time of the crash, according to the National Weather Service. “You could barely see in front of you,” Eddy, the assistant fire chief, said.

Montgomery Field did not file a weather report Thursday morning, the weather service said. The automated weather observation report that pilots can tune into over the air traffic control frequency was “missing” or “not available,” according to radio traffic at the time of the crash.

The plane departed from Teterboro, N.J., on Wednesday, then stopped in Wichita, Kan., before departing on the three-hour flight to San Diego, according to Flightaware.com.

As the plane approached the San Diego region, the pilot asked for the weather report out of Montgomery-Gibbs. The air traffic controller for Southern California Approach responded, in audio recorded by LiveATC.net, that the automated weather report at that field was out of service.

The pilot asked again a few minutes later, saying he had checked the conditions at Gillspie Field in El Cajon.

“I just wanted to know if you had any idea on the weather. I got the Gillespie weather, but as I’m sure you know, sometimes it can be dramatically different between Gillespie and Montgomery,” the pilot told the controller. “According to Gillespie, it’s pretty much down to minimum, so I just want to see what I’m in for here.”

The traffic controller came back with the weather report out of Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, indicating visibility of a half a mile and a cloud ceiling of 200 feet.

“Alright, uh, doesn’t sound great, but we’ll give it a go,” the pilot responded. He then asked about the conditions at Brown Field in Otay Mesa, just in case. The pilot’s reaction to those conditions: “Not a great option either.”

The pilot continued to head for Montgomery-Gibbs.

Around 3:45 a.m., the pilot announced over the Montgomery-Gibbs tower frequency that the plane was about 3 miles away on final approach.

Eddy said the crash left “a gigantic debris field” in the densely packed neighborhood. He said all the fires were doused within a few hours, save for “one stubborn car fire that will not go out.”

A loud noise that sounded like a jet, followed by a big boom, jarred Gilbert Gonzalez from sleep. His Salmon Street house shook. His wife told him she saw a flash.

He was five houses from the crash site.

Gonzalez quickly dressed, slipped on flip-flops and ran outside. “You could see the entire strip of flames across the street,” he said.

Gonzalez, who works as a Navy damage controlman, or firefighter, on a Navy ship, saw neighbors using garden hoses trying to fight the fire.

He said the house that was directly hit by the plane “was just demolished.” He and others went to help a family in a neighboring home, draping his ladder over a back fence to provide the family with an exit route.

Someone handed him two small children. He carried them to a nearby home, then returned to help their mother over the fence. He also helped get the family dogs to safety.

“It is unreal,” he said a short time later in a nearby Navy Exchange parking lot. “We are in the flight line of this airport. We see these things coming over our houses every day. And you think about it — what if it just dropped one day? Never thought it would actually happen this way.”

Some residents who evacuated from their homes, many still clad in pajamas, gathered in the NEX parking lot early Thursday, where they were approached by volunteers and people offering water, food, diapers and other supplies.

Philip Rizzo, CEO of Liberty Military Housing, which manages the properties, estimated 40 to 50 families would be displaced until the investigation finished. Of those, maybe 15 to 20 families may need to be rehoused.

“It’s a holiday weekend, so finding them a hotel through the weekend, that will be a challenge,” Rizzo said. “So we appreciate any partnership we get from the local hotels. But I would say beyond that, we have temporary vacant homes that are furnished in our portfolio.”

Before his alarm went off at 5:30 a.m., Austin Lariccia’s cellphone was flooded with text messages from friends and coworkers asking if he was OK. What happened?, he asked. Headlines indicated a plane crash in San Diego.

As soon as he read that the small aircraft had crashed in his Murphy Canyon neighborhood, he rushed to the front door of his home along Taussig Street and found a row of burned, parked vehicles from the aftermath. A couple of hours before, a river of flames illuminated Sample Street, facing Lariccia’s house.

“Once I read the article, I was like, Oh, that’s like right in my front yard,” he said. “This car was still on fire. You see on the news all the plane crashes happening and then you see so many planes flying over us and wonder if that’s gonna happen here.”

Lisa Monroe lives east of Canyon View South. She and her husband heard numerous sirens around 4 a.m.

Late Thursday morning she quickly moved through rows of vehicles parked at the Navy Exchange gas station on Santo Road and Gurnard Street. She was spreading the word to families that had evacuated that food and shelter were available at Miller Elementary. A few families, many with children and pets, who weren’t sure when they’d be able to return to their homes agreed to stop by.

“As soon as we learned what had happened, my husband and I, we started gathering food and water for folks,” she said. “All the teachers and everyone are helping out, coming together to help.”

Esther Hoffman, who lives a street from the crash site, said the incident was “all around our house. There were a whole bunch of mini explosions.”

She spent the morning in the Navy Exchange parking lot, where she’d evacuated with her small children, dogs and visiting in-laws in a van she’d just borrowed from a neighbor.

“Even if the fire didn’t get us, I thought the smoke was going to be bad for my kids and for my dogs,” she said.

As she spoke, Liberty Military Housing workers walked through the parking lot, passing out food and donuts to evacuated families. Someone gave Hoffman’s young daughter a coloring book. The Navy Exchange opened up early so families could use the bathrooms.

“I think what is really great is just because we are all military, we have that ‘we are in this together’ type deal,” Hoffman said.

Evacuated residents chatted in the parking lot, piecing together what they could from eyewitness accounts.

“I do feel like if this were to happen in a non-military neighborhood, it would have been a whole lot more scattered.”

Less than an hour after the crash, authorities called in San Diego Humane Society to help with animals at the crash site, agency spokesperson Nina Thompson said.

A total of eight adult dogs and eight puppies were taken to two Humane Society campuses, where workers in hazardous material suits bathed and decontaminated them.

The Humane Society’s emergency response team also headed to the evacuation zone to retrieve pets and return them to their owners.

Thursday’s crash was reminiscent of a December 2021 crash near El Cajon that killed two pilots and two nurses aboard a medical transport jet that went down in a residential neighborhood a little east of Gillespie Field. Similar to Thursday’s crash, the air ambulance was trying to land in poor weather and struck power lines before slamming into a neighborhood. Nobody on the ground was injured.

Just two months prior, in October 2021, a doctor flying from his job in Arizona to his home in San Diego crashed in a Santee neighborhood while trying to reach Montgomery-Gibbs. The doctor died, as did a UPS driver whose truck was struck; a couple in their 70s were rescued from one of the two homes destroyed in the crash.

In 2017, a plane experienced engine trouble just after taking off from Montgomery-Gibbs and crash-landed in an empty school playground before skidding into a Clairemont home. The wreck killed two passengers on the plane and destroyed the home.

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(Staff writers Alex Riggins, Gary Robbins and Phillip Molnar contributed to this report.)

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