Two men were longtime friends.

The small experimental plane that crashed in a quiet Santa Clarita neighborhood killed two men, whose lives are only now beginning to come into focus.

43 year-old Ronald Weiss of Encino and 45 year-old Anthony Crippen of Pacific Palisades were in the plane as it went down over Sand Canyon Saturday. They were both reportedly killed on impact.

KHTS spoke with Andrea Zeigler, Anthony Crippen’s aunt, who described him as a happy, nice man.

“He didn’t have a mean bone in his body,” she said. “He was really happy with his life, and he had a girlfriend.”

Zeigler said that Crippen and Weiss had been friends since grade school, and that Crippen had told family members that he was excited about the plane, which Weiss built.

It is not clear who was piloting the plane at the time of the crash; however Zeigler noted that both men had a pilot’s license.

On Monday the FAA confirmed that the plane had taken off from Whitman Airport in Pacoima, citing a routine pleasure flight in the airport’s logs.

The plane was seen falling to the ground in a nose-first spin just after 12:00 p.m. Saturday.