Plane crashes into southern California home, kills 5

A small plane crashed into a Southern California home on Sunday, killing five people, injuring two others and spraying debris across several residential blocks that temporarily became a site of chaos.

The crash, which occurred around 2 p.m., killed four people inside the Yorba Linda home — two men and two women — as well as the plane’s male pilot, Lt. Cory Martino of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department said at a news conference on Sunday. Officials said the pilot had been the only person on the aircraft; the relationship between the four people inside the home was not clear.

An investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board, Eliott Simpson, said the plane left Fullerton Airport at 1:35 p.m. It traveled about 10 miles and had climbed to about 7,800 feet, he said, before making a “rapid descent” into Yorba Linda, a sleepy suburban city 10 miles northeast of Disneyland.

The authorities did not immediately release the names of the five people who were killed or disclose the exact cause of their deaths. Two other people were taken to a hospital with what the authorities described as “moderate injuries,” though they did not elaborate.