Small plane crash near Coyote Lake takes the lives of four
family members, including two small children and a woman who grew
up in Morgan Hill
By Kristen Munson and Matt King, Staff Writers
Gilroy – Rescue workers discovered the wreckage of a small plane Thursday morning that crashed into the hillside Wednesday near Coyote Lake, killing the recently-licensed pilot, his niece, a boy he was adopting and his wife, who grew up in Morgan Hill.
Emergency response crews located the Cessna 172 single engine plane at 8:30am Thursday after searching through rain and fog for five hours Wednesday night before being called off until morning. The Santa Clara Coroner’s Office will use DNA to officially identify the remains, however, family members said Matthew Armstrong, 41, his wife Sara, 37, Cody, 4, and niece Kacie Kuslich, 11, were killed in the crash.
According to Sara’s sister Leah Graham, the couple planned to leave at 6pm Wednesday, but decided to wait out the rainy weather for a couple of hours.
“My mom tried to get them to stay, saying that the weather was too bad and that they could stay at her house and fly home in the morning,” Graham said. “At the last minute they changed their minds to go back home to (Fresno to) their two daughters.”
The Armstrongs are survived by two teen-age daughters, Brittany, 14, and Brandy, 16. The family had just moved from Los Banos to Fresno, where they owned a machine shop. According to relatives, the Armstrongs were delivering parts to Fresno.
“The kids just went for a ride because they loved to fly,” Graham said.
Kacie was the daughter of one of Sara’s five siblings.
“Kacie was his life,” Graham said crying.
Family members believe Armstrong was heading back to San Martin when the plane crashed. Graham refuted a witness statement that the said the pilot may have been doing acrobatics before the plane crashed.
“Matthew would never do that. Not with the children in there or in weather like that. He just got his license,” she said.
Armstrong received his private pilot’s license about one month ago and did not file a flight plan before departing from South County Airport in San Martin to Chandler Airport in Fresno.
He requested a weather briefing prior to taking off and was told that visual flying was not recommended, said Nicole Charnon, air safety investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board. He was not licensed to fly using instruments alone.
“A traffic controller probably would not have let him take off, but in the end the final decision rests with the pilot in command to make the decision to go or not go,” Charnon said.
Armstrong contacted the Northern California Air Traffic Control Center in flight, where he was located on radar. That data will be matched up with weather and cloud information to verify if he was flying through conditions unsuited to visual flying.
The exact time Armstrong took off is unknown, officials from the Federal Aviation Association said. He sent a distress signal at about 8:30pm.
“He started experiencing loss of altitude and he called air traffic control,” said FAA spokesperson Allen Kenitzer. He lost contact at about 2,500 feet.
Witnesses heard the plane circling for about 15 minutes before going down, said Deputy Sheriff Serg Palanov.
Mike Dodd lives across from the entrance to Coyote Lake Park and listened as the plane circled near his house on Roop Road and called 911 after he saw a flash of red hit the ground at about 8:45pm.
“It was pretty horrific,” he said. “I heard a thump – a huge thump – then saw a flash, then nothing. I was in the field shouting ‘Hello, hello,’ because it was so close.”
White pieces of debris were visible from the roadside halfway up a hill across from his home.
“The flash was straight over here,” he said pointing to an area several hundred yards from where the debris was spotted in the hills. “It must have bounced.”
Area resident Greg Podshadley said he could not see the plane, but heard it circling for at least 10 minutes.
“I heard sounds like he was gunning the engine, like he was trying to get altitude or doing acrobatic stunts,” Podshadley said Wednesday night. “I thought, ‘this guy is crazy,’ and then I saw a red flash on the other side of the hill. Then there was nothing, no sound. I thought ‘oh my God,’ and called 911.”
Rescuers from South Santa Clara Fire/CDF, the Sheriff’s Office, California Highway Patrol, American Medical Response and the U.S. Coast Guard were the first to respond Wednesday night. Crews hiked for five hours searching for the plane in the hills following a faint signal from the plane’s transporter.
At 1am the signal stopped.
“At that point we had nothing to go on,” said Deputy Palanov.
The search resumed at 6am Thursday as rescue units from the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office, San Mateo, Almaden and Contra Costa counties scoured the hills trying to locate the craft from the coordinates Dodd and other witnesses gave. The aircraft was found at about 8:30am.
Armstrong had recently purchased the 1956 Cessna from good friend Leonard Vongiese of Morgan Hill. Vongiese declined a request for an interview.
“My best friend just died,” he said at his Morgan Hill machine shop. “I can’t handle it.”
Charles Jackson, a flight instructor at Gavilan Aviation with more than four decades of flight experience, frequently instructs on Cessna 172s.
“Generally they’re considered one of the safer light airplanes,” he said. “They’ve got a good track record … You’re always taking a certain amount of risk because you’re only flying with one engine.”
Jackson believes Armstrong could have flown into the clouds and become disoriented.
“It could have been he was circling the lake because he was hemmed in trying to get to the valley,” he said.
In a Cessna, an instrument called an altimeter reads how high the plane is above sea level. However, it is up to the pilot to know what the terrain is and how high the mountains are if visibility is low, Jackson said.
“You’ve got to know how high those mountains are – especially at night – because there’s nothing over there. There’s nothing lit that you can see,” he said. “In my opinion, to take off in that weather, in the dark without an instrument rating, is pushing your luck very hard.”
Family members gathered in Morgan Hill to grieve as officers from the Sheriff’s department stood watch over the wreckage Thursday night.
“We’re a really tight knit family,” Graham said. “They will be sorely missed. They were a big part of this family. Our family will never be the same.”
Kristen Munson covers public safety for the Dispatch. Matt King is a staff writer for the Morgan Hill Times.
