Three employees of electric car start-up Tesla Motors died on Wednesday when their small plane crashed in a residential neighborhood in California’s Silicon Valley but no one was injured on the ground, media reports said.
Tesla chief executive Elon Musk wasn’t on board the plane, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) said.
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“Three Tesla employees were on board a plane that crashed in East Palo Alto early this morning. We are withholding their identities as we work with the relevant authorities to notify the families. Our thoughts and prayers are with them. Tesla is a small, tightly-knit company, and this is a tragic day for us,” a statement by Musk published on the company’s website said.
The WSJ noted that the crash came after Tesla, based in the San Francisco suburb of San Carlos, said in a securities filing last month that it was planning an initial public offering – the EV maker, with a Lotus-based sportscar on sale and a luxury sedan in the works – has around 500 employees.
The twin-engine Cessna 310 that crashed in the residential neighborhood of East Palo Alto, about 30 miles southeast of San Francisco, was registered with a company owned by Tesla engineer Doug Bourn, the WSJ said, adding that neither Tesla nor authorities would confirm whether Bourn was on the plane.
The plane carrying the trio took off from an airport in Palo Alto just before 8 am, authorities said. The plane almost immediately hit a power tower, which clipped one of its wings, an East Palo Alto police department official said.
The wing crashed into an unoccupied day-care facility and the rest of the plane slammed onto the street and skidded the length of a football field, hitting three cars before coming to a stop.
