Callahan & Blaine

A small plane crashed into a strip mall shortly at approximately noon on Thursday, killing one person and critically injuring another.

The plane, a single-engine Cessna 177, crashed soon after taking off from the taking off from Torrance Municipal Airport and hit the building just one mile east of the airport near Crenshaw Boulevard and Pacific Coast Highway.

The plane crashed into the roof of the California Pizza Kitchen and Joey’s Smokin’ BBQ portion of the strip mall rooftop.

While police officers were able to extricate both of the plane’s occupants from the Cessna, sadly one of the men succumbed to his injuries at the scene where he was pronounced dead.

The surviving occupant was rushed to a hospital in critical condition.

Remarkably there have been no reports of anyone on the ground being hurt by the plane crash.

Radio communication prior to the Cessna’s takeoff from Zamperini Field suggested that its pilot only intended to fly a one-mile radius lap at low altitude around the airport. Minutes later, another pilot contacted air traffic controllers to report that it had gone down.

Torrance resident Tina Schneider, who works in the building next to the crash, saw the plane fall.

At first, she said, she saw it take off. Then it made a U-turn, appearing to try to return to the airport.

“You could hear the plane was having problems,” said Schneider, 47, who works at DaVita, a dialysis center.

She heard the plane backfire three times. Then Schneider watched the plane hit the building.

“There was a guy, hanging upside down and dangling,” she said. “He was alive, stuck in his (seatbelts).”

Officials pushed her and others back. “Gasoline was all pouring out,” she said. “Then they cut (the man) out of his straps and pulled him to the side.”

Officials have not said what may have precipitated the crash. It’s unclear if the pilot radioed in a distress call before hitting the ground. It likely will take a day or two to remove the plane and investigate further.

The pilot’s identity has not been released.

Omid Taheri, 32, saw the crash from the Acura South Bay dealership across the street, where he’s a sales associate.

“I just saw the plane looking like it was trying to get altitude,” he said. “Then it turned sideways and to the right and then took a nosedive straight down.”

Taheri didn’t notice any smoke coming from the plane as it went down, but Hasan Roberson, a sales manager, said it sounded like the engine was sputtering.

There was no explosion or visible fire when the plane hit the building, Taheri said.

Jacob Poon of Long Beach was in the middle of cutting a client’s hair at neighboring Victor Anthony’s Hair Studio when the building began shaking.

He and his coworkers thought the building had just been struck by a car.

“We’re lucky the building didn’t catch on fire,” said Poon, 66. “It was a real Godsend that we are safe, because you could expect a fire from an airplane crash.”

Officials arrived minutes later and evacuated the building, he said.

Jesse Ortiz, who’s worked in an office building near where the plane crashed for 14 years, said he also heard the engine sputtering prior to the crash.

He saw first responders trying to help.

“There were four or five police officers – they were pushing the fuselage to get the guy out, because the plane’s nose was down,” Ortiz said.

He saw officials remove one person, a man who looked like he was in his late 50s or early 60s, from the wreckage with blood all over his face.

“He was non-responsive,” Ortiz said.

Torrance resident Amir Amini, 41, owner of Kabab Curry Cuisine of India, also was working at the time of the crash. His restaurant is part of the same building.

Once he heard there was a plane crash, he rushed to all of the other businesses in the building and alerted them to shut off their gas in case of a fire.

“It’s dangerous,” Amini said. “He was just 5 to 10 feet away from the electric and gas line.”

As eyewitnesses spoke to a reporter, small planes continued to fly overhead and come in for landings at the nearby airport

As of about 3:15 p.m., all lanes of north and southbound Crenshaw Boulevard were open to traffic from PCH to Skypark Drive. Eastbound Airport Drive remained closed at Crenshaw Boulevard, and authorities asked that people avoid the area.

Accidents like these often leave victims with the right to pursue a claim. As one of the leading catastrophic personal injury law firms in California, Callahan & Blaine has obtained numerous record-breaking verdicts and settlements in cases like this, helping bring some small justice to the aggrieved family. If you or someone you know has suffered a catastrophic injury or died as the result of an accident, contact the best personal injury attorneys in Orange County for expert legal counsel.  Contact Callahan & Blaine if you believe you have a right to seek justice at (888) 894-1703.