SAN DIEGO, CA- A young Californian fighter pilot Taj Sareen raised in Northern California was killed when his plane crashed on Oct 21. He is being remembered and honored by loved ones. San Diego-based Sareen, 34, was flying his F/A-18 Hornet aircraft when it crashed shortly after take-off on Oct 21 near the Lakenheath Royal Air Force base in Britain. U.S. Marine major Sareen,was an F/A-18 Hornet aircraft pilot since 2005,
was identified on Oct 22.Sareen, a pilot with Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 232, was flying the aircraft back to Miramar Marine Corps Air Station.mSareen was commissioned in the Marine Corps on February 13, 2005. He was deployed to Afghanistan in 2010 as part of Operation Enduring Freedom and was an instructor with Marine Fighter Attack Training Squadron 101. This was Sareen’s third deployment. But whenever he was away, he’d speak with his family every day.mHis parents and sister want people to know what kind of man Sareen was. They told ABC7 News about the last conversation they had with him that they will never forget. “I’ll see you in two days dad,” K.B. Sareen said. Those last words echo in a home Sareen was about to come back to. Sareen had a tightly knit family. His mother, father and sister have lived at their Hillsborough home in Northern California for the past 17 years. They heard a jet crashed in Taj’s squadron at 6 a.m. Oct 23 and many painful hours without information followed after that. “Three Marine officers walked towards our house. They said, ‘it was your son,’ devastating,” K.B. said. The Marine fighter pilot was in one of six jets coming back to the states from the Persian Gulf when it crashed in England. He ejected, but did not survive. Initial reports say one of his final moves was to avoid crashing into homes on the way down. “That’s the kind of person he was,” his father said. Sareen graduated from the University of San Francisco in 2004.
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