One killed, four injured as OC-bound plane crashes in San Diego

One person died and four others, including a child, were critically injured today when a home-built light plane headed to the Fullerton airport crashed on Admiral Baker Golf Course in San Diego County.

The single-engine Velocity Super XLRG5 went down in Tierrasanta near the 1th hole in the northern reaches of the military golf course just east of Interstate 15 shortly before 1 p.m., according to police and the San Diego Fire-Rescue Department.

One of the occupants died at the scene. Emergency-services helicopters landed on the links so medics could airlift two of the badly injured survivors to a hospital, a dispatcher said. The others were transported by ground ambulance.

Soon after taking off from Montgomery Field about 12:45 p.m., the pilot of the plane radioed the tower to report that a door on the aircraft was stuck open and he was heading back to the Kearny Mesa airport to make an emergency landing, the Federal Aviation Administration reported. Flight controllers then lost contact with him, and the crash was reported moments later.

The plane, which is registered to a Mesa, Ariz., man, was en route to Fullerton Municipal Airport at the time of the accident, according to the FAA.

It was the second deadly light-plane crash to occur in the San Diego area in a week. On Tuesday morning, a twin-engine Beech 95-B55 went down in a field behind an Oceanside primary school and burst into flames, killing the pilot and sole occupant, 83-year-old Cecil Judd of San Clemente.

Witnesses said Judd's plane was "in obvious distress'' with a sputtering engine just before it dropped nose-first into the brushy lot near San Luis Rey Elementary School, which had no classes in session at the time, police Lt. Leonard Mata said.