Father, son IDd as plane crash victims

The bodies of a 67-yearold man and his 43-yearold son were recovered from the wreckage of a small plane that crashed Saturday shortly after taking off from Buchanan Field Airport in Concord.

The single-engine Beechcraft Bonanza was located about 4 a.m. Sunday by a Civil Air Patrol crew on private land off Lake Herman Road near Interstate 680 in Benicia, said Deputy Daniel Pratt, a spokesman for the Solano County Sheriff ’s Office.

Pratt identified the two men killed in the crash as Perry Vallee of Arcata (Humboldt County) and Vallee’s son, Preston Vallee, who lived in Concord.

The men were reported missing by family members about 9:40 p.m. Saturday when they failed to show up at their destination, the Arcata-Eureka Airport in McKinleyville, Pratt said. They had taken off from Buchanan Field Airport on Saturday afternoon.

The cause of the crash is under investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board.

It was the second small plane crash in the Bay Area in less than a week. On Friday, the body of 58-year-old John R. Wilson, an oil and gas industry consultant from Santa Ynez (Santa Barbara County), was recovered from the wreckage of his Cessna 172 that crashed at the Point Reyes National Seashore in Marin County.

Wilson, who fled flooding at another home he owned in Houston in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, was flying from Santa Barbara County to Charles M. Schulz-Sonoma County Airport in Santa Rosa.