Cessna appears in field next to highway; pilot says he plans to saw it up, then vanishes
Cessna in coyote brush.
By Chris Calder | editor@advocate-news.com |
PUBLISHED: January 9, 2020 at 8:44 am | UPDATED: January 9, 2020 at 9:49 am
On New Year's Eve afternoon, calls started coming in to the Elk Store about a plane crash.
A Cessna sits in a field north of Elk, a few hundred yards from the bluff's edge.
They weren't 911 calls. There was no smoking wreckage. Just a plane sitting in the brush a couple hundred yards east of Highway 1, about two miles north of Elk.
Elk Fire Chief Bob Matson drove up to investigate.
Plane and mowed strip in the coyote brush.
There, he said, he found a Daniel Morehouse and pickup truck next to a damaged Cessna sitting cockeyed in the coyote brush. Nearby was a recently-mowed strip in the brush, about a quarter-mile long and 15 yards across.
Matson said Morehouse told him that he was not trying to land the plane in the field, and that the mowed patch was not an attempt at a landing strip. Instead, the man said, it was a sightline. To where, Matson said, was unclear.
Matson said that Morehouse told him he was trying to see how low he could get the RPM's on the plane's engine to go, when the wing caught on something. Asked what he planned to do about the incident, Matson said Morehouse told him he would "call it in" to the authorities. Asked what he planned to do with the stranded plane, according to Matson, Morehouse said he planned to cut it up with a Sawz-All.
Matson called it in to the FAA, and ended up on several hours worth of conference calls with that agency, the National Transportation Safety Board and other federal agencies that typically get involved with plane crashes. According to Ian Gregor, Western Regional spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration, Morehouse never did "call it in" and the FAA eventually contacted him.
Gregor wrote Monday that "We were notified about this accident on Wednesday. A single-engine Cessna 175 landed in a field in Elk City under unknown circumstances around 3 p.m. Tuesday. The pilot, who was the only person on board, was not injured. There was significant damage to the aircraft. The aircraft tail number is N7095M. The FAA is investigating."
The Cessna with tail number N7095M is registered to Daniel J. Morehouse of Petaluma. FAA records show him activating the license on May 6, 2019. The plane was previously owned by a Jack Evans of Oregon.
There is a Daniel Morehouse of Petaluma on Facebook who identifies himself as the owner of a business called "Synoptic", though it is unclear what kind of business it is. It also states that he "Studied Emergency Medical at UCLA Center for Prehospital Care" and "Studied Obfuscation at long and undistinguished".
That Daniel Morehouse did not respond to a message asking if he knows anything about the crashed plane north of Elk.
Chris Calder