Five killed as small plane crashes in mall parking in California

A small plane crashed in the parking lot of a mall in the US state of California, killing all five people on board, the authorities said.

The twin-engine Cessna plane was en route to John Wayne Airport when the pilot declared an emergency and crashed around 12:30 pm local time in Santa Ana yesterday, near the South Coast Plaza shopping mall, CNN reported.

The plane crashed just a block away from the mall. There were no injuries on the ground. The plane hit an unoccupied, parked vehicle on the ground, but the owner was in a store at the time of the crash, said Tony Bommarito, the public information officer with Orange County Fire Authority.

Family members identified one of the victims as Nasim Ghanadan, who was a realtor from the East Bay and on the flight for work. They said she was 29 years old.

The identities of other victims were not immediately available.

Emma Gonzales, who works at the Buffalo Wild Wings in the mall, said she felt the building shake. "You just felt the ground move," she said.

The Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board were investigating the crash.