The relatives of a man killed in April when two small planes collided near Malibu Creek State Park filed a wrongful death suit Tuesday against a flight training school and its employee who was piloting the other plane, City News Service reported.
The family of Christopher Wade, who died while piloting one of the planes, filed the suit in the Los Angeles Superior Court against the American Flyers school in Los Angeles and employee Peter Nagy. Wade and Nagy were both piloting Cessna 172s when the planes collided.
The suit states that Nagy was providing flight instruction for American Flyers at the time.
Wade, 63, and passenger Cheryl Jolene Straw, 69, were killed on April 29 when the planes collided midair eight miles northeast of Ventura near Calabsas. Three others were injured.
Both planes had taken off from Santa Monica Airport shortly before the crash, the Malibu Times previously reported.
After the collision, Nagy’s plane crash-landed hard on the third fairway of the Westlake Village Golf Course. Wades’s plane crashed in Malibu Creek State Park. Official’s said Wade’s fiery crash on a steep grading dented the mountainous terrain in Malibu Creek State Park, the Malibu Times previously reported.
Wade’s plane was also believed to have sparked a brief brush fire in an “inaccessible” portion of a canyon near Mulholland Highway and Las Virgenes Road, but the fire was fully contained soon after the crash.