2 small planes collide; 5 dead

Two private planes flying about a mile from an airport collided Sunday, killing at least five people as debris rained down on car dealerships below, authorities said.

The two small Cessnas collided at 3:35 p.m. about a mile from the small Corona Municipal Airport, said Wayne Pollack of the National Transportation Safety Board.

Two people were killed from each plane, and the fifth was inside a Chevy dealership that was hit by wreckage, Pollack said.

"There were bodies falling out of the sky," eyewitness Hector Hernandez told KCBS-TV. "One of them crashed into the top of a Ford Mustang, and another one fell not too far behind that one on the parking lot."

Wreckage fell on the dealerships and over an area of several hundred yards in Riverside County about 45 miles southeast of Los Angeles, and TV pictures showed that the smashed fuselage of one of the planes landed atop a parked car.

One of the planes, a Cessna 172, is registered to William Reinke of La Habra, according to aircraft databases.

The other, a smaller Cessna 150, is registered to Air Corona, Inc., based in Dover Delaware.