Plane Crash in West Los Angeles

A small fixed-wing plane, a Cessna 210, crashed near Century City around 6:15 p.m., near the intersections of Glendon and Mississippi. Police and fire are on the scene.

One person has been found dead in the wreckage of that crash in, according to city fire. Police are reporting it was the pilot.

Bob Faridian of Beverly Hills was there when it happened, on his way to get to Leon’s Barber Shop.

“I was parking my car, and the airplane passed from over my head,” Faridian said. “I saw when the airplane crashed, a big explosion.”

Ian Gregor of the Federal Aviation Administration says the pilot of that Cessna declared an emergency for unknown reasons around 6:10 p.m., shortly after takeoff from Santa Monica Airport.

The plane is registered to a Santa Monica resident, and it’s not immediately known if there was more than one person aboard.

City News Service reports, “the aircraft broke into several pieces, with the bulk of the wreckage bursting into flames at the base of a palm tree that burned to its trunk.”