2 Die in Crash of Training Flight

SAN DIMAS, Calif. — Two people died when a twin-engine plane crashed in rugged terrain at the edge of the Angeles National Forest on Saturday.

Members of a mountain rescue crew found the Piper Seneca at 4:15 a.m., Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputy David Smail said.

The plane was on a training flight, traveling a distance of just 10 miles between Chino and a small airport in La Verne, said Sheriff’s Lt. Robert Crume.

It went down in an area known as Sycamore Canyon at the northern edge of San Dimas, killing the pilot instructor and the student.

Controllers at Brackett Field notified the nearby San Dimas sheriff’s station at 8:45 p.m. Friday that the plane had disappeared from their radar.

“It was very heavy fog last night, and the area they went into was a mountainous area,” Deputy Rob Upham said.

The National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration planned to take over the investigation. No official cause of the crash was released.

The instructor was Niam Navidi, 20, of Covina, Crume said. The student was not carrying identification, and authorities were attempting to identify him through fingerprints, said Sheriff’s Lt. David Smith at the county coroner’s office.