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The owner of a car searched by police after a small aircraft struck Beijing's tallest building has been identified as Liu Junhua, according to a number plate search cited by the Financial Times.
The vehicle was at Shifosi airfield in Beijing's eastern Pinggu District, where the aircraft that hit CITIC Tower is believed to have taken off from.
A small aircraft crashed into Beijing's tallest building on Friday, sending debris and plane parts falling into streets in the Chinese capital's central business district, according to The New York Times. Reuters witnesses reported a heavy police presence and road closures around the tower.
The building, known as CITIC Tower or China Zun, is a 108-story skyscraper in eastern Beijing and the headquarters of the state-owned conglomerate CITIC Group. It is the tallest building in the Chinese capital.
An FT reporter witnessed black-clothed men, overseen by uniformed officers, searching a black SUV late Friday at Shifosi airfield, the base of Eastern Pioneer flying school.
The school is believed to be the operator of the plane that struck CITIC Tower in central Beijing at about 6 p.m. Friday.
A search of the car's number plate in a private database linked to public records identified the vehicle as a Buick Enclave CXL registered to a person named Liu Junhua, the FT reported.
The name was also circulating on social media in connection with the crash.
It could not immediately be confirmed whether the vehicle or its owner was linked to the crash at CITIC Tower, which is the headquarters of one of China's biggest state-owned financial conglomerates.
Internet searches showed a person with the same name is a managerial employee at a subsidiary of China CITIC Bank, an arm of the financial group.
The FT said it was unable to confirm any link between the person and the incident. CITIC Group and China CITIC Bank declined to comment.
The block leading to CITIC Tower remained cordoned off by police on Saturday morning, and officers were searching the bags of anyone entering the surrounding streets.
A hole was still visible on the east side of the 528-meter-tall building.
"There's no particular reason, just traffic controls," one officer said when asked why the streets were blocked.
Friday's crash took place in one of Beijing's busiest financial districts, just kilometers from President Xi Jinping's compound at Zhongnanhai near Tiananmen Square.
Such incidents are highly unusual in China, which maintains some of the world's strictest aviation controls, particularly in the capital, as well as exhaustive precautions to protect its top leadership.
China's official media has made no mention of the incident, and there have been no reports of confirmed fatalities.
Discussion of the incident has been heavily censored on the internet in China, where image searches for CITIC Tower showed old pictures from before the crash.
Images and footage circulating on social media and verified by the FT showed debris falling from the building and wreckage from a plane with the registration number B-12PP.
The aircraft was identified as a Sunward Aurora SA60L, a two-seat, single-engine sport aircraft, according to tracking service Flightradar24.
In some images of the aircraft from a registered database, the name of Eastern Pioneer is visible.
Police officers and black-clothed men were guarding the offices of the school on Friday evening.
One person with knowledge of the incident confirmed that the aircraft that struck CITIC Tower belonged to the school but declined to elaborate.
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