Alaska co-founder of music talent agency among three confirmed dead in San Diego plane crash
Six on board the plane, FAA says, including man with Alaska ties
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) - A private jet that crashed into a neighborhood in San Diego early Thursday morning killed at least three people on board, including the man with an Alaska address who owned the plane and was a co-founder of a national music talent agency.
The plane, a Cessna S550 Citation II, was registered to a limited liability company in Alaska named Daviation LLC. The company is registered by David Michael Shapiro, an FAA-registered pilot, flight instructor, and ground instructor, according to NBC News.
Shapiro was confirmed Thursday afternoon as one of the three killed in the crash, which included two other employees of music agency Sound Talent Group, a company that has represented artists including Hanson, Sum 41 and Vanessa Carlton. That’s according to Sound Talent Group.
Shapiro is listed as the owner of the plane and has a pilot’s license, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. He also owned a flight school called Velocity Aviation, as well as a record label, Velocity Records, according to his LinkedIn page.
Sound Talent Group didn’t share the names of the other two employees who died.
It was unclear as of press time if Shapiro was piloting the plane when it went down. Shapiro has addresses in Alaska and San Diego, according to NBC News reporting.
Six people were on board the plane, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. Authorities were still combing the scene and recovering the bodies before releasing an official number and identifying the dead, though there were not believed to be any survivors aboard the flight.
The jet was tracked from the Colonel James Jabara Airport in Wichita, Kansas, heading toward the Montgomery-Gibbs Executive Airport in San Diego, according to FlightAware data.
The plane left Wichita around 2:36 a.m. CDT on Thursday and was scheduled to arrive in San Diego at 3:47 a.m. PDT. However, the plane never made it to the airport.
San Diego authorities initially said two people had died. The National Transportation Safety Board now says the total number of fatalities is unknown, but the plane could hold as many as 10 people.
The aircraft crashed just before 4 a.m. into a military housing neighborhood in San Diego amid foggy weather. According to the Associated Press, the plane appeared to directly strike at least one home — which had a charred and collapsed roof — with several others catching on fire. The aircraft smashed through vehicles, and around 10 homes suffered serious damage. While about 100 people were displaced, emergency crews reportedly did not transfer anyone from the military housing neighborhood for medical treatment, Assistant San Diego Fire Chief Dan Eddy said, though other reports indicate one person may have been taken to a hospital for treatment.
Eddy confirmed in a press conference Thursday morning that there were multiple fatalities and that his department was working with the FAA to confirm the total.
The San Diego Police Department initially said that at least two people who were on the plane were killed and eight others were injured. Depending on interior configurations, the Cessna S550 Citation II can typically carry up to 10 people, including pilots.
The FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board will investigate the cause of the crash. An NTSB spokesperson confirmed with Alaska’s News Source that the agency is on the scene waiting for investigators to arrive.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
See a spelling or grammatical error? Report it to web@ktuu.com
Copyright 2025 KTUU. All rights reserved.
