Pilot made a panicked attempt to land before a crash in Southern California that killed 2

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The pilot of a small plane attempted to make an emergency landing shortly after takeoff before crashing through the roof of a building in Southern California, according to air traffic control audio that includes panicked gasping and a female voice saying, “Oh my God,” moments before the crash.

The crash Thursday left two people dead and 19 injured. The plane was owned by Pascal Reid of Huntington Beach, California, according to Federal Aviation Administration records. The Huntington Beach High School girls soccer team posted Friday on Instagram that Reid and his daughter Kelly, a student at the school, died in a plane crash.

“Yesterday our soccer family suffered an unimaginable loss,” the post read. “Kelly was a natural caregiver and always put others first. She will be deeply missed. Her father was at every single game, always so proud of his daughter.”

The coroner's office hasn't yet identified the dead or confirmed they were on the plane.

The plane had just taken off from the Fullerton Municipal Airport when the pilot told the air traffic control tower, “Immediate landing required.”

The pilot initially told the air traffic controller that he planned to land on Runway 6. The air traffic controller then told another aircraft to turn away from that area and told the pilot he could land on either Runway 6 or 24. The pilot responded that he was going to land on Runway 24 instead. Moments later, panicked gasping and an “Oh my God” could be heard just before the audio went quiet.

Federal investigators said the aircraft asked for a return to the airport at about 900 feet (274 meters). It crashed about 1,000 feet (305 meters) short of Runway 24, through a sprawling furniture manufacturing building owned by Michael Nicholas Designs.

According to a preliminary Federal Aviation Administration report, the aircraft crashed under “unknown circumstances.”

Eleven people were taken to hospitals, while eight were treated and released at the scene, police said. The injuries ranged from minor to very serious, said Michael Meacham, Fullerton deputy chief of fire operations.

Security camera footage from Rucci Forged, a wheel manufacturer across the street, shows the plane was tilted on its side as it dove into the building, causing a fiery explosion and a black plume of smoke.

Chris Villalobos, an airport operations worker, said the airplane’s owner was a regular at the airport with his own hangar and had frequently taken off from there.

The FAA identified the plane as a single-engine, four-seat Van’s RV-10, a popular home-built airplane sold in kit form. Investigators said the aircraft was built in 2011.

Tim Olson, an aviation enthusiast and an early purchaser of the RV-10 plane kit, said he had exchanged emails with Reid over the years and knew him as a “diligent, responsible” pilot and aircraft builder. Olson said the RV-10 had become popular as an “easy-to-build” plane from a reputable kit manufacturer. He said he has flown more than 1,500 hours on his own plane, even taking it to the Cayman Islands.

“It’s real sad to hear that it ended this way for him,” Olson said. “I know from talking back and forth that he did travel, camped out with his plane around the country a bunch.”

Reid's daughter Kelly is listed on school sports websites as a junior at Huntington Beach High School who played flag football, soccer and lacrosse.

The airport in Fullerton has one runway and a heliport. Metrolink, a regional train line, is nearby and flanks a residential neighborhood and commercial warehouse buildings.

The Fullerton City Council posted a statement on social media calling the crash a “solemn tragedy.”

“The City of Fullerton is committed to providing support for all those affected and working with the agencies involved to uncover the details of this incident,” Mayor Fred Jung said in the statement. “We are grateful for the strength of our community and the compassion we show one another in times of crisis.”

Another four-seat plane crashed into a tree a half-mile (0.8 kilometers) from the airport in November while making an emergency landing shortly after takeoff, The Orange County Register reported. Both people on board suffered moderate injuries.

Fullerton is a city of about 140,000 people about 25 miles (40 kilometers) southeast of Los Angeles.

A mourner weeps as they are embraces before a memorial service at First Christian Church in Huntington Beach, Calif., Friday, Jan. 3, 2025, for those killed in a small plane crash the day before. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

Mourners arrive for a memorial service at First Christian Church in Huntington Beach, Calif., Friday, Jan. 3, 2025, for those killed in a small plane crash the day before. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

Daniel Villalbazo, left and Efrain Romero show photos on their mobile phones, Friday, Jan. 3, 2025, in Fullerton, Calif., after witnessing a plane crash the day before at the warehouse of a commercial building where the accident happened. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

Workers line up to enter a warehouse of a commercial furniture factory to collect their belongings Friday, Jan. 3, 2025, in Fullerton, Calif., where a small plane crashed the day before. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

People attend a vigil at First Christian Church in Huntington Beach, Calif., on Friday, Jan. 3, 2025, for those killed in a small plane crash taking off from the Fullerton Municipal Airport the day before. (Jeff Gritchen/The Orange County Register via AP)

Mourners embrace before a memorial service at First Christian Church in Huntington Beach, Calif., Friday, Jan. 3, 2025, for those killed in a small plane crash the day before. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

People stand outside of a building where a plane crash occurred Thursday, Jan. 2, 2025, in Fullerton, Calif. (AP Photo/Kyusung Gong)

Workers stand near police lines at the scene of a small plane crash, Thursday, Jan. 2, 2025, in Fullerton, Calif. (AP Photo/Kyusung Gong)

A firefighter enters a building where a plane crash occurred Thursday, Jan. 2, 2025, in Fullerton, Calif. (AP Photo/Kyusung Gong)

Firefighter stage outside a building where a plane crash occurred Thursday, Jan. 2, 2025, in Fullerton, Calif. (AP Photo/Kyusung Gong)

Firefighter walk down a ladder outside a building where a plane crash occurred Thursday, Jan. 2, 2025, in Fullerton, Calif. (AP Photo/Kyusung Gong)

Firefighters load a person onto an ambulance after a small plane crashed into a commercial building on Thursday, Jan. 2, 2025, in Fullerton, Calif. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

Firefighters stage outside a building where a plane crash occurred, Thursday, Jan. 2, 2025, in Fullerton, Calif. (AP Photo/Kyusung Gong)

Firefighters respond to a commercial building where a small plane crashed on Thursday, Jan. 2, 2025, in Fullerton, Calif. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

A woman is carried on a stretcher near the site of a plane crash, Thursday, Jan. 2, 2025, in Fullerton, Calif. (AP Photo/Kyusung Gong)

The military ties of the man who carried out an attack in New Orleans on New Year’s and another who died in an explosion in Las Vegas the same day highlight the increased role of people with military experience in ideologically driven attacks, especially those that seek mass casualties.

In New Orleans, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a veteran of the U.S. Army, was killed by police after a deadly rampage in a pickup truck that left 14 others dead and injured dozens more. It’s being investigated as an act of terrorism inspired by the Islamic State group.

In Las Vegas, officials say Matthew Livelsberger, an active duty member of the U.S. Army Special Forces, shot himself in the head in a Tesla Cybertruck packed with firework mortars and camp fuel canisters, shortly before it exploded outside the entrance of the Trump International Hotel, injuring seven people. On Friday, investigators said Livelsberger wrote that the explosion was meant to serve as a “wake up call” and that the country was “terminally ill and headed toward collapse.”

Service members and veterans who radicalize make up a tiny fraction of a percentage point of the millions and millions who have honorably served their country. But an Associated Press investigation published last year found that radicalization among both veterans and active duty service members was on the rise and that hundreds of people with military backgrounds had been arrested for extremist crimes since 2017. The AP found that extremist plots they were involved in during that period had killed or injured nearly 100 people.

The AP also found multiple issues with the Pentagon’s efforts to address extremism in the ranks, including that there is still no force-wide system to track it, and that a cornerstone report on the issue contained old data, misleading analyses and ignored evidence of the problem.

Since 2017, both veterans and active duty service members radicalized at a faster rate than people without military backgrounds, according to data from terrorism researchers at the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, or START, at the University of Maryland. Less than 1% of the adult population is currently serving in the U.S. military, but active duty military members make up a disproportionate 3.2% of the extremist cases START researchers found between 2017 and 2022.

While the number of people with military backgrounds involved in violent extremist plots remains small, the participation of active military and veterans gave extremist plots more potential for mass injury or death, according to data collected and analyzed by the AP and START.

More than 480 people with a military background were accused of ideologically driven extremist crimes from 2017 through 2023, including the more than 230 arrested in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection — 18% of those arrested for the attack as of late last year, according to START. The data tracked individuals with military backgrounds, most of whom were veterans, involved in plans to kill, injure or inflict damage for political, social, economic or religious goals.

The AP’s analysis found that plots involving people with military backgrounds were more likely to involve mass casualties, weapons training or firearms than plots that didn’t include someone with a military background. This held true whether or not the plots were carried out.

The jihadist ideology of the Islamic State group apparently connected to the New Orleans attack would make it an outlier in the motivations of previous attacks involving people with military backgrounds. Only around 9% of such extremists with military backgrounds subscribed to jihadist ideologies, START researchers found. More than 80% identified with far-right, anti-government or white supremacist ideologies, with the rest split among far-left or other motivations.

Still, there have been a number of significant attacks motivated by the Islamic State and jihadist ideology in which the attackers had U.S. military backgrounds. In 2017, a U.S. Army National Guard veteran who’d served in Iraq killed five people in a mass shooting at the Fort Lauderdale airport in Florida after radicalizing via jihadist message boards and vowing support for the Islamic State. In 2009, an Army psychiatrist and officer opened fire at Fort Hood, Texas, and killed 13 people, wounding dozens more. The shooter had been in contact with a known al-Qaida operative prior to the shooting.

In the shadow of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol — led in part by veterans — law enforcement officials said the threat from domestic violent extremists was one of the most persistent and pressing terror threats to the United States. The Pentagon has said it is “committed to understanding the root causes of extremism and ensuring such behavior is promptly and appropriately addressed and reported to the proper authorities.”

Kristofer Goldsmith, an Army veteran and CEO of Task Force Butler Institute, which trains veterans to research and counter extremism, said the problem of violent extremism in the military cuts across ideological lines. Still, he said, while the Biden administration tried to put in place efforts to address it, Republicans in Congress opposed them for political reasons.

“They threw, you know, every roadblock that they could in saying that all veterans are being called extremists by the Biden administration,” Goldsmith said. “And now we’re in a situation where we’re four years behind where we could have been.”

During their long military careers, both Jabbar and Livelsberger served time at the U.S. Army base formerly known as Fort Bragg in North Carolina, one of the nation’s largest military bases. One of the officials who spoke to the AP said there is no overlap in their assignments at the base, now called Fort Liberty.

Goldsmith said he is concerned that the incoming Trump administration will focus on the New Orleans attack and ISIS and ignore that most deadly attacks in the United States in recent history have come from the far right, particularly if Trump’s nominee for defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, is confirmed.

Hegseth has justified the medieval Crusades that pitted Christians against Muslims, criticized the Pentagon’s efforts to address extremism in the ranks and ahead of Joe Biden's inauguration in the weeks after the Jan. 6 attack was himself flagged by a fellow National Guard member as a possible “insider threat.”

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AP reporter Tara Copp contributed from Washington, D.C.

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Contact AP’s global investigative team at Investigative@ap.org

Police officers stand near the scene where a vehicle drove into a crowd on New Orleans' Canal and Bourbon streets, Wednesday, Jan. 1, 2025. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)