They were two rock music veterans who were excited to fly together from New Jersey to San Diego.
One was Daniel Williams, a former drummer for the metalcore band The Devil Wears Prada. The other was Dave Shapiro, a music agent who worked with Sum 41, Hanson, Jefferson Starship and other artists, and was also a pilot who ran his own aviation business.
In an Instagram story posted on Wednesday night, Mr. Williams shared a photo of their plane, a Cessna Citation, on a tarmac and two more photos of himself in the co-pilot’s seat.
“Here we goooooo,” he wrote.
But after crossing the country, the jet hit power lines and crashed in a residential neighborhood as it prepared to land in dense fog in San Diego early on Thursday morning.
All six people aboard were killed, eight people on the ground were injured and 10 homes were damaged, the authorities said. It was not clear if Mr. Shapiro was piloting the Cessna when it crashed or if Mr. Willians was a co-pilot.
Officials on Friday did not release the names of the victims but Mr. Shapiro, 42, was among those killed, according to the Sound Talent Group, the company he co-founded. Mr. Williams, 39, was believed to have been among those aboard the plane.
Dan Baker, an investigator at the National Transportation Safety Board, said on Friday that an automated system that reports weather at the Montgomery-Gibbs Executive Airport in San Diego was not working as the plane was preparing to land there.
The system “is necessary to provide weather updates to pilots at the facility,” he said, and without one “it affects the pilot’s decision-making.”
In addition, Mr. Baker said, an official notice had been issued warning pilots that runway approach lights at the airport were out of service.
The airport said in a statement that the Federal Aviation Administration was responsible for maintaining the weather reporting system and runway approach lights. The F.A.A. did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday evening.
As investigators began sifting through the wreckage, tributes to Mr. Shapiro and Mr. Williams poured in across the rock music industry, where they had devoted fan bases.
Mr. Shapiro grew up near Albany, N.Y., and started out playing drums in a band called Count the Stars that was signed by Victory Records.
A self-described “straightedge hardcore kid,” Mr. Shapiro moved to San Diego, where he started selling clothing at kiosks in two malls, he said on a 2021 podcast.
He later moved into the music business, booking several rock bands, like Pierce the Veil, that started to take off.
Mr. Shapiro fell in love with flying in 2005, when he was 22 and began to earn some money in the music business, which he used to pay for an introductory flight class, according to the website for his aviation business, Velocity Aviation.
Mr. Shapiro went on to gain more than 15 years of flight experience, with thousands of hours logged and more than a million miles flown, according to the website.
He offered flight instruction classes and sightseeing tours in San Diego and Homer, Alaska.
“From BASE jumping to aerobatic flying, helicopters to twin engines, flight instructing to furthering his own education, doesn’t matter to Dave as long as he gets to be in the sky,” the website reads.
The Cessna was built in 1985 and owned by Daviator, a company registered in Homer, Alaska, according to public records. Its name appeared to be a portmanteau of Mr. Shapiro’s given name, Dave, and aviator.
Mr. Shapiro married Julia Pawlik in Talkeetna, Alaska, in 2016, she wrote on a blog that year.
After picking up their marriage license, she said, they flew into Denali National Park on a red propeller plane with skis mounted over the wheels and landed on a glacier.
He wore a suit over an Iron Maiden shirt. She wore a sparkly dress. They both wore Vans.
“When I met Dave we became instantly bonded over the unconventional lifestyles we lead and our constant need for adventure,” Ms. Shapiro wrote.
Mr. Shapiro started Sound Talent Group with Matt Andersen and Tim Borror in 2018. The company represented hundreds of artists, including Lamb of God, Beartooth, Built to Spill and Steve Vai.
He was also a founder of the National Independent Talent Organization, which formed in April 2020 when the coronavirus pandemic shut down the live entertainment business.
“Dave was fearless in life, and tireless in his work, and the kind of friend you would want on your speed dial,” the pop band Hanson said on social media. “Dave seemed to always be working on a new endeavor, or to be going on a new adventure, because he was always excited for a new challenge.”
Mr. Williams started playing drums in the sixth grade, and cited Underoath, a Christian metalcore band from Tampa, Fla., as an early influence.
Later, he played in a Blink-182 cover band and looked up to that band’s drummer, Travis Barker, he said in a 2011 interview with Colorado Music Buzz.
Mr. Williams was one of the founding members of The Devil Wears Prada, which formed in Dayton, Ohio, in 2005, according to allmusic.com. The band released multiple albums, and headlined the Vans Warped Tour in the summer of 2011, according to allmusic.
Mr. Williams described the group as a Christian metalcore band, but rejected the idea that it could be easily classified.
“I just consider ourselves a metal band that screams, and that’s all there is to it,” he told Colorado Music Buzz. “I don’t think we are trying to do a fad or a fashion type thing. We like metal music and we like it as loud as possible.”
According to his LinkedIn profile, he left the band in 2016 and worked as a software architect at GoPro in San Diego. He also started an app called YogiDoList, which featured a daily list of yoga poses.
On Thursday, The Devil Wears Prada posted a tribute to Mr. Williams on Instagram, next to a photo of him giving a rock salute from behind his drum kit.
“No words,” the band wrote. “We owe you everything. Love you forever.”
Michael Levenson covers breaking news for The Times from New York.
The post Drummer and Music Agent Among 6 Killed in San Diego Plane Crash appeared first on New York Times.
