Austin Bert Coller

• Individual
• Ancestors
• Descendants
• Relationship
• Timeline
• Family
• Suggest

Plane Crash Kills Four

Plane Crash Kills Four
Sutter City, Calif., (AP) - Four persons returning from a hunting trip were killed yesterday afternoon when their light plane crashed and exploded on a hillside three miles north of here.
Sutter county Deputy Coroner Walter Ullrey identified the dead as:
Pilot, Austin B. Coller, 34, a Culver City police sergeant; Russell E. Riner, 37, operator of the Riner Electrical Corp., Culver City; Harvey Sigsbey, Los Angeles, and F. William Wood, employed by the Los Angeles City Department of Water and Power.
The plane smashed into the 1200-foot hill with such force that pieces, hunting gear and a number of dead pheasants and ducks were widely strewn.
The victims were burned beyond recognition in the crash and small grass fire the explosion a set.
The craft, a Beech Bonanza, left Chico Municipal Airport at 12:07 p.m., after Coller filed a flight plan for Culver City. A watch strapped to his wrist was stopped at 12:47, indicating it had been in the air less than 40 minutes.
--Santa Cruz Sentinel, Santa Cruz, California, November 24. 1952