The owner of the plane said his heart goes out to the victims’ families, including a total of 11 young children left behind.
A moment of silence was held on Sunday during an early morning sermon at the Rolling Hills Covenant Church for the families of theClyde LaGue, chairman of the Elder Board, broke the news to congregants and shared a message from Rod Lenders, a fellow church elder who lost his 25-year-old son Riese Lenders of Rancho Palos Verdes in the crash.
Lenders received his commercial pilot certificate in April, records from the Federal Aviation Administration show. He was piloting the Cessna C550 business jet along with co-pilot Manuel Manuel Vargas-Regalado at the time of the crash, said Michael Morris, the plane’s owner. Lenders’ 31-year-old girlfriend, Huntington Beach resident Lindsey Gleiche, also died in the accident.
Morris said he had received a call from Vargas-Regalado, manager and lead pilot of his flight company, who told him he wanted to take a few people to Las Vegas and asked if he could use one of his planes. The company owner agreed and said he didn’t ask questions because he knew the 32-year-old pilot, who had flown for him for two years, was responsible.Vargas-Regalado and his 33-year-old wife, Abigail Tellez-Vargas from Murrieta, died in the crash, leaving behind seven children, Morris said.
The crash was reported around 4:15 a.m. on Saturday. The plane, engulfed in flames, landed in a field about 500 feet short of the French Valley Airport runway, Eliott Simpson, an aviation accident investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board, said.
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