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Pilot found dead in plane wreckage west of Lake Tahoe

EL DORADO COUNTY, Calif. — The pilot of an aircraft reported missing in the Sierra over the weekend was found dead among the wreckage of his plane on Tuesday afternoon.

El Dorado County Sheriff’s officials said the wreckage was found southwest of Lake Schmidell — which is about 30 miles due west of South Lake Tahoe — at about 4:15 p.m. Tuesday.

The Sheriff’s Office has not identified the pilot, who was reported overdue on Sunday.



Searchers started on looking on Sunday, but had to call off efforts due to bad weather.

Weather also affected the ability of aircraft to get a low level visual search of the area on Monday morning.



“Civil Air Patrol is flying above and unable to get visual on the ground at this time,” Sgt. Tasha Thompson said on Monday. “CHP aircraft attempted to get a visual of the search area but the weather hampered their efforts. We do have search and rescue ground crews actively searching at this time.”


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