The runway lights were out, a weather alert system wasn’t working and there was heavy fog at a San Diego airport when a pilot who had flown across the country made the decision to proceed with landing but came up short and crashed into a neighborhood,

Dense fog had rolled into the area around the time the plane was approaching the airport. Visibility was at half a mile at 3:55 a.m. and had dropped to a quarter of a mile just after 4 a.m. in the area around Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, which is just a few miles north of the crash site, according to the National Weather Service.

A critical weather observation system at Montgomery Field Airport was malfunctioning for days before the plane crash early Thursday morning. The FAA did not issue an advance notice about the outage, records show.

Homer residents say David Shapiro and his wife had spent time in recent years at their property north of town.