A pilot from San Diego County, and vice commander of the Civil Air Patrol’s Pacific region, was believed to have been killed while flying his small plane in bad weather north of San Francisco, deputies said Saturday.
Carl Morrison, 75, was flying his 1990 Mooney M20J propeller-driven plane from Petaluma Municipal Airport to his home field at Fallbrook, north of San Diego, after working Friday as a consultant with the Sonoma County Water Agency, according to a Facebook post from his family.
“We are so saddened by the passing of our husband, father, and friend,* the family’s Facebook post read. Morrison had been studying atmospheric rivers, the type of storm that hit the Bay Area Friday, according to the Santa Rose Press-Democrat newspaper.
The retired Marine had donated hundreds of hours to searching for lost civilian pilots in the CAP, a volunteer agency.
At about 6:40 p.m. Friday, Sonoma County Sheriff’s deputies received a call from the U.S. Air Force that a small plane’s emergency radio beeper was pinging from east of Petaluma, a city about 40 miles north of San Francisco.
Deputies rushed to the coordinates, on Sonoma Mountain, but couldn’t immediately locate the plane, Sonoma County Sheriff’s Sgt. Spencer Crum told City News Service.
At about the same time, a woman from San Diego County called the Petaluma Police Department to report that her husband was supposed to have left the Petaluma Municipal Airport in his Mooney M20 to head back to Southern California, and was overdue home, Crum said.
More than three hours after the initial report, sheriff’s deputies spotted a small fire in a remote ravine near the 3600 block of Manor Lane, outside Petaluma. Deputies hiked to the location and found the downed aircraft and the body of the man believed to be the pilot, Crum said.
The National Transportation Safety Board was expected to investigate the crash.
According to the Santa Rosa newspaper, Morrison was an attorney and often flew his plane to business meetings around the country.
“He had the most wonderful disposition,” Sonoma County Supervisor Shirlee Zane told the Press-Democrat. “He was always positive, and always smiling * just a wonderful human being. We can*t even imagine our team without him, it’s just devastating.”
Morrison was a 20-year member of the Marine Corps., retiring as a lawyer and public affairs officer in 1986 in the rank of lieutenant colonel, according to his law office website as quoted by the Press-Democrat. He graduated from Brigham Young University in 1966 before obtaining a law degree from DePaul University in Chicago in 1976, the newspaper reported.
—City News Service
