On February 8 at around 5 p.m., San Mateo County Sheriff’s Deputies received a strange call. The caller reported that a small airplane had landed on the beach in Half Moon Bay, which looks at California’s most famous big wave spot, Maverick’s.
When authorities arrived on the scene, they did indeed find a plane on the sand, just south of Poplar Beach.
“The plane was found intact and unoccupied,” the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office wrote in a press release. “A short time later, Sheriff’s Deputies located a person matching the description of the individual seen landing and then walking away from the airplane.”
While that was strange on its own, when they looked into the matter further, things got even more weird. As it turned out, the plane was stolen from an airport in Palo Alto, which is just a half-hour drive from Half Moon Bay.
“The individual seen walking away from the airplane has been identified as Luiz Gustavo Aires, a 50-year-old male from Miami, Florida,” the press release continued. “Aires has been arrested and booked into the Maguire Correctional Facility in Redwood City, for violation of California Penal Code 499 (D)-Theft of an airplane.”
This is the second plane crash in the area in less than a month. In mid-January, an “amateur-built” experimental craft went down off the coast of Half Moon Bay with four people on board.
