A former Santa Monica mayor was killed in the light aircraft that crashed on the beach just south of Santa Monica Pier on Thursday. Rex Minter was said to have been the passenger on the Cessna plane that hit the shoreline and flipped over just after 3 p.m., according to CBS Los Angeles. The outlet added that the single-engine aircraft went down less than 10 minutes after taking off from Santa Monica on a flight to Malibu. Minter served as Santa Monica mayor from 1963-1967 after first being elected to the city council in 1955. He went on to serve as an attorney for Arcadia and a judge for the Los Angeles County Superior Court, the city of Santa Monica said in a statement, sending officials’ “deepest condolences” to Minter’s family. The statement described Minter as an “avid aviator.”
