SAN DIEGO (AP) — A private plane approaching an airport crashed in a San Diego neighborhood, killing the six people on board, including groundbreaking alternative music executive Dave Shapiro.
The crash stunned the heavy metal and hard rock scene that grew out of the punk movement. The music agency that Shapiro cofounded, Sound Talent Group, represented groups like Pierce The Veil, Parkway Drive and Sum 41, while also venturing into more pop acts such as Vanessa Carlton.
It could take a year to sort out exactly what happened to the plane, but investigators know there was thick fog, problems with the runway lights and a broken weather alert system, according to Dan Baker of the National Transportation Safety Board.
The pilot and passengers died, but no one on the ground was killed or seriously injured.
The dead also included a photographer and two young women just starting out in the music industry.
Here’s what to know about the victims and the crash:
Shapiro, 42, got into music playing in a band he founded with friends while in high school, called Count with Stars.
But it was the connections he made that made him successful, more than the music he played.
Shapiro helped bring the underground $10-a-show alternative scene of the 2010s to the mainstream. He also was huge in creating a community, said Mike Shea, founder of Alternative Press Magazine.
“In this music industry, there are just too many people ripping people off and using people,” Shea said. “Dave was not like that.”
Shapiro was listed as the plane’s owner and had a pilot’s license. Officials have not said who was flying.
Fortner, 24, and Huke, 25, joined Shapiro's agency as booking associates after graduating from college, according to bios released by Sound Talent Group, which confirmed both women were on the plane.
Fortner “was hooked on music” from a young age thanks to her father, who took her to concerts, and as a teen showed interest in pursuing it as a career.
Huke, too, knew from a young age that she wanted to work in the industry, and she worked hard to save money to attend concerts and festivals.
“There was nothing Emma loved more than live music,” the agency said.
Both Fortner and Huke were good at their jobs, which included planning tours, the agency said.
Williams was a former drummer for The Devil Wears Prada, a popular Ohio metalcore band celebrated for its ability to marry melodic punk rock with metallic detours.
When Williams “was in the band, that’s when they broke out,” Shea said.
Thomas Gutches, who manages rock bands and artists, recalled Williams' ability to captivate audiences with his drumming.
“Daniel was putting on a show from his style of playing," he said.
Williams’ band, which had two releases reach the Top 10 of the Billboard 200, was a client of Sound Talent Group.
Kenyon, 36, was another passenger, according to the coroner's office in San Diego. A spokesperson for Sound Talent Group said she was not an employee.
Bryan Charles Feldman, Kenyon's father, said in a statement to AP that she was respected in her career as a professional photographer and was deeply loved by friends and family, including her daughter and her partner.
Kenyon had been traveling “to photograph and support” some longtime friends, Feldman said, and went on the late-night private flight rather than fly commercial so she could get home in time to take her daughter to school.
"The world has lost a beautiful bright light," he said.
Also killed was 41-year-old Damian, the coroner's office announced Saturday.
A martial arts school in San Diego, The Training Center, said via Instagram that Damian trained there. The gym is hosting an open-mat session in his memory Monday.
Headed from New Jersey to San Diego with a fueling stop in Kansas, the plane went down about 2 miles (3 kilometers) from San Diego’s Montgomery-Gibbs Executive Airport. Eight people on the ground were hurt, none seriously.
The Cessna 550 Citation crashed after hitting power lines, Baker said.
The pilot acknowledged to an air traffic controller that the weather was not ideal and debated diverting to a different airport, according an audio recording posted online by LiveATC.net.
The Federal Aviation Administration posted an official notice that the airport's runway lights were out. The pilot did not discuss that with the controller but did say he knew the its weather alert system was not working.
“Doesn’t sound great, but we’ll give it a go,” he told the controller.
The fog was so thick around the time of the crash that “you could barely see in front of you,” Assistant San Diego Fire Department Chief Dan Eddy said.
The U.S. had its deadliest plane crash in more than 23 years in January when an American Airlines passenger jet and an Army helicopter collided in Washington, killing all 67 people aboard the two aircraft.
Last month a sightseeing helicopter broke apart and crashed into the Hudson River between New York City and New Jersey, killing six people.
In early February a small commuter plane crashed in western Alaska, killing all 10 people on board.
And in Philadelphia, a medical transport plane plummeted into a neighborhood shortly after takeoff in late January, killing the six people on board and two more on the ground.
Debris covers the ground after a small plane crashed into a San Diego neighborhood, setting homes and cars on fire and forcing evacuations early Thursday, May 22, 2025. (AP Photo/William Liang)
Debris covers the ground after a small plane crashed into a San Diego neighborhood, setting homes and cars on fire and forcing evacuations early Thursday, May 22, 2025. (AP Photo/William Liang)
Debris covers the ground after a small plane crashed into a San Diego neighborhood, setting homes and cars on fire and forcing evacuations early Thursday, May 22, 2025. (AP Photo/William Liang)
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Widening protests in Iran sparked by the Islamic Republic's ailing economy are putting new pressure on its theocracy.
Tehran is still reeling from a 12-day war launched by Israel in June that saw the United States bomb nuclear sites in Iran. Economic pressure, which has intensified since September when the United Nations reimposed sanctions on the country over its atomic program, has put Iran's rial currency into a free fall, now trading at some 1.4 million to $1.
Meanwhile, Iran's self-described “Axis of Resistance” — a coalition of countries and militant groups backed by Tehran — has been decimated in the years since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in 2023.
A threat by U.S. President Donald Trump warning Iran that if Tehran “violently kills peaceful protesters” the U.S. “will come to their rescue," has taken on new meaning after American troops captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, a longtime ally of Tehran.
“We're watching it very closely,” Trump told journalists aboard Air Force One late Sunday. “If they start killing people like they have in the past, I think they're going to get hit very hard by the United States.”
Here's what to know about the protests and the challenges facing Iran's government.
Demonstrations have reached over 220 locations in 26 of Iran’s 31 provinces, the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency reported early Monday. The death toll had reached at least 19 killed, it added, with more than 990 arrests. The group, which relies on an activist network inside of Iran for its reporting, has been accurate in past unrest.
Understanding the scale of the protests has been difficult. Iranian state media has provided little information about the demonstrations. Online videos offer only brief, shaky glimpses of people in the streets or the sound of gunfire. Journalists in general in Iran also face limits on reporting such as requiring permission to travel around the country, as well as the threat of harassment or arrest by authorities.
But the protests do not appear to be stopping, even after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday said “rioters must be put in their place.”
The collapse of the rial has led to a widening economic crisis in Iran. Prices are up on meat, rice and other staples of the Iranian dinner table. The nation has been struggling with an annual inflation rate of some 40%.
In December, Iran introduced a new pricing tier for its nationally subsidized gasoline, raising the price of some of the world’s cheapest gas and further pressuring the population. Tehran may seek steeper price increases in the future, as the government now will review prices every three months.
The protests began first with merchants in Tehran before spreading. While initially focused on economic issues, the demonstrations soon saw protesters chanting anti-government statements as well. Anger has been simmering over the years, particularly after the 2022 death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody that triggered nationwide demonstrations.
Iran's “Axis of Resistance," which grew in prominence in the years after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq, is reeling.
Israel has crushed Hamas in the devastating war in the Gaza Strip. Hezbollah, the Shiite militant group in Lebanon, has seen its top leadership killed by Israel and has been struggling since. A lightning offensive in December 2024 overthrew Iran’s longtime stalwart ally and client in Syria, President Bashar Assad, after years of war there. Yemen's Iranian-backed Houthi rebels also have been pounded by Israeli and U.S. airstrikes.
China meanwhile has remained a major buyer of Iranian crude oil, but hasn't provided overt military support. Neither has Russia, which has relied on Iranian drones in its war on Ukraine.
Iran has insisted for decades that its nuclear program is peaceful. However, its officials have increasingly threatened to pursue a nuclear weapon. Iran had been enriching uranium to near weapons-grade levels prior to the U.S. attack in June, making it the only country in the world without a nuclear weapons program to do so.
Tehran also increasingly cut back its cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, as tensions increased over its nuclear program in recent years. The IAEA's director-general has warned Iran could build as many as 10 nuclear bombs, should it decide to weaponize its program.
U.S. intelligence agencies have assessed that Iran has yet to begin a weapons program, but has “undertaken activities that better position it to produce a nuclear device, if it chooses to do so.”
Iran recently said it was no longer enriching uranium at any site in the country, trying to signal to the West that it remains open to potential negotiations over its atomic program to ease sanctions. But there's been no significant talks in the months since the June war.
Iran decades ago was one of the United States’ top allies in the Mideast under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who purchased American military weapons and allowed CIA technicians to run secret listening posts monitoring the neighboring Soviet Union. The CIA fomented a 1953 coup that cemented the shah’s rule.
But in January 1979, the shah, fatally ill with cancer, fled Iran as mass demonstrations swelled against his rule. Then came the Islamic Revolution led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, which created Iran’s theocratic government.
Later that year, university students overran the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, seeking the shah’s extradition and sparking the 444-day hostage crisis that saw diplomatic relations between Iran and the U.S. severed.
During the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, the U.S. backed Saddam Hussein. During that conflict, the U.S. launched a one-day assault that crippled Iran at sea as part of the so-called “Tanker War,” and later shot down an Iranian commercial airliner that the U.S. military said it mistook for a warplane.
Iran and the U.S. have seesawed between enmity and grudging diplomacy in the years since, and relations peaked with the 2015 nuclear deal, which saw Iran greatly limit its program in exchange for the lifting of sanctions. But Trump unilaterally withdrew America from the accord in 2018, sparking tensions in the Mideast that intensified after Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
FILE - An Iranian security official in protective clothing walks through part of the Uranium Conversion Facility just outside the Iranian city of Isfahan, on March 30, 2005. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)
FILE - A customer shops at a supermarket at a shopping mall in northern Tehran, on Sept. 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)
FILE - Current and pre-revolution Iranian banknotes are displayed by a street money exchanger at Ferdowsi square, Tehran's go-to venue for foreign currency exchange, in downtown Tehran, Iran, on Aug. 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)
FILE - People cross the Enqelab-e-Eslami (Islamic Revolution) street in Tehran, Iran, on Sept. 27, 2025. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)
FILE - Protesters march on a bridge in Tehran, Iran, on Dec. 29, 2025. (Fars News Agency via AP, File)
People wave national flags during a ceremony commemorating the death anniversary of the late commander of the Iran's Revolutionary Guard expeditionary Quds Force, Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in a U.S. drone attack in 2020 in Iraq, at the Imam Khomeini grand mosque in Tehran, Iran, Thursday, Jan. 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
