| USA TODAY | - |
A
U.S. Navy jet crashed off the Southern California coast Wednesday night
only hours after a Marine jet in a separate incident crashed into a
neighborhood east of San Diego.
The F-A-183, based at Naval Air Station in Oceana, Va., went down during a predeployment training mission as the pilot was attempting to land aboard the carrier Carl Vinson, the Navy said, according to The San Diego Union-Tribune.
The pilot ejected safely and was rescued, but the plane has not been recovered, the Navy said.
In the first incident, the Harrier AV-8B jet crashed into a residential community in Imperial, about 90 miles east of San Diego, Wednesday afternoon. It went down in a front yard, damaging three homes. The pilot ejected safely and no one was the ground was hurt, according to Marine officials.
Despite plowing into a row of tightly spaced houses, 1st Lt. Jose Negrete said no people on the ground were hurt.
"I was pretty close to it," said witness Shaun Penniman, who was out running with his dog at the time, NewsNet5 reports. "I heard like a pop and a whistle. And right when I looked up is when I saw the pilot eject."
The Third Marine Aircraft Wing aircraft was stationed in Yuma, Ariz., according to Marine Corps Air Station Miramar.
Christopher Garcia, 11, was watching television two blocks away with his father and brother when he heard an explosion that "felt like an earthquake." He hurried outside to see a pilot parachuting into a field about 200 yards from the crash.
"A mushroom cloud of black and red smoke" rose above one house with a collapsed roof, he said. The garage of the house next door was on fire. He saw a woman crying outside saying, "That's my house!"
Adriana Ramos, 45, whose home is less than a block from the crash, said her "whole house moved."
"It felt like a bomb was thrown in the backyard," he said.
Ramos fled with her 4-year-old granddaughter and 10-year-old daughter, who both cried at the sight outside.
This was the second crash in a month of a Harrier jet from the Yuma air base.
On May 9, a pilot was able to eject safely before his jet crashed in a remote desert area near the Gila River Indian Community, south of Phoenix. No one was injured.
And in July, 2012 another AV-8B Harrier crashed in an unpopulated area 15 miles from the air base, which is among the busiest in the world for the Marine Corps, and is used it to train military aviators from around the nation.
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