The last Instagram post by The Devil Wears Prada drummer Daniel Williams showed him in the cockpit of a plane hours before it crashed in a fireball into several homes in San Diego.
Williams, 39, who played in the Christian metal-core group between 2005 and 2016 before working for GoPro, was on board the small Cessna 550 that crashed into the Murphy Canyon neighborhood in the early hours of Thursday morning.
Authorities said they fear all six passengers on board, including music agent Dave Shapiro, 42, who owned the light corporate jet, had died in the crash that led to the evacuation of 100 people and 15 homes and cars engulfed in flame. At least two fatalities had been confirmed and eight others injured.
Sitting on the tarmac before takeoff at New Jersey’s Teterboro Airport, Williams posted a series of photographs to his Instagram story.
“Flying back with @davelocity,” he said, standing outside the private plane.
“Hey. Hey… you.. Look at me… I’m the (co)pilot now,” he wrote from behind the wheel of the plane in the cockpit. “Here we goooooo,” he said in a third.
Williams’s father, Larry, confirmed to TMZ that his son was on the flight and had most likely died. He also said that his son did not have a pilot’s license.
The Devil Wears Prada took to social media to lament the loss of its former drummer.
“No words. We owe you everything. Love you forever,” it read, alongside a collage of photos of Williams.
“This hurts really bad,” wrote the band’s guitarist Jeremy DePoyster. “Rest easy boys. I love you. We’ll see each other again.” Lead guitarist Kyle Sipress reshared a photo of Williams overlaid with “forever family.”
According to NBC San Diego, the aircraft was heading to San Diego’s Montgomery-Gibbs Executive Airport after a quick fuel stop in Kansas during its 2700-mile journey.
A final transmission from the flight revealed the jet’s pilot notifying passengers that they were about 3 miles from the airport, according to audio recordings on LiveATC.
The controller said visibility was about half a mile, and the cloud ceiling was 200 feet.
“All right, that doesn’t sound great, but we’ll give it a go,” the pilot responded.
Though there was no sign of a problem or emergency being declared, the plane plunged from the sky about 30 minutes later.
The full scale of damage came into view later Thursday, as officials inspected the skeleton of a home with a gaping hole caused by the plane’s impact. The destruction stretched for at least a quarter mile down the residential street.
San Diego Fire Assistant Chief Dan Eddy noted, however, that it was a “miracle” that no local residents were killed.
