Pat Dollard SAN FRANCISCO – A San Francisco-area coroner whose office received the bodies of two teenage victims of the Asiana plane crash says officials are conducting an autopsy to determine if one of the girls was run over and killed by a rescue vehicle.
San Mateo County Coroner Robert Foucrault says Sunday that senior San Francisco Fire Department officials notified him and his staff at the crash site on Saturday that one of the 16-year-olds may have been struck on the runaway.
Foucrault says an autopsy he expects to be completed by Monday will involve determining whether the girl’s death was caused by injuries suffered in the crash or “a secondary incident.”
He says he did not get a close enough look at the victims on Saturday to know whether they had external injuries.
Chinese state media reported Sunday that the two fatalities in Saturday afternoon’s plane crash at the San Francisco International Airport were 16-year-old Chinese schoolgirls named Ye Mengyuan and Wang Linjia.
The two girls came with a group of 29 students and five teachers from a highly competitive school in Zhejiang, an affluent coastal province.
While declining to identify the victims, earlier a San Francisco fire official said both victims had been found on the “exterior” of the plane. A spokesman for Asiana Airlines said the two killed Chinese teenagers were seated at the back of the plane, according to the state-run Xinhua news agency.
Xinhua also reports that Chinese President Xi Jinping “expressed great concern over the accident and sent condolences to the Chinese victims and their families.”
http://patdollard.com/2013/07/officials-probing-if-rescuers-ran-over-and-killed-plane-crash-victim/
Does anyone get the feeling that they are trying to use this incident to fuel tension between Washington and Beijing? Especially with the Chinese students. Something smells fishy here. This incident continues to imply to everyone that it was no accident and more and more like the government had a private hand in it.
This is very fishy. These big aircraft with a capacity of ~ 300-450 are flown almost entirely by a programmed computer system, including landings.
As food for thought, TheRegister.co.uk reported in 2008, “Computer system suspected in Heathrow 777 crash:
Experts have suggested that the simultaneous failure of both engines of the BA 777 which last week crash-landed at Heathrow must have been caused by a computer glitch, the Times reports.
BA038 lost power when it was about two miles from the airport’s south runway. The pilot glided the aircraft to a belly-flop short of the tarmac, and the 136 passengers and 16 crew escaped without serious injury.
There has been speculation that the incident was provoked by the aircraft striking a flock of geese, but the idea that bird strike could knock out both engines has been dismissed as “unthinkable”.
Accordingly, the Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB), has said in its initial report that it would focus on “the range of aircraft systems that could influence engine operation”, while examining all possible causes.
The Boeing 777’s computer system has in the past caused a few scares. In 2005, it decided to suddenly reduce a Malaysia Airlines aircraft’s speed from 270 knots to 158 knots and put it into a 3,000ft climb. The pilot prevented a disasterous stall by turning off the autopilot and pushing the nose down. Over the Atlantic last year, another aircraft was suddenly thrown to the right by the computer, again obliging the pilot to disengage the autopilot.” ® (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/01/21/777_computer_theory/)
I think it’s entirely possible the Chinese plane’s computer system was hacked, and the pilot could not get a response from the throttles.
Yep Enbe, computers really should not be involved with things like this. If something goes wrong – which eventualy will – can be blamed on computer malfuntion. This was probobly a computers fault but then again it just goes to show the reliability of computers though doesn`t it? I kind of thinking that the pilot was getting a last minute b**w j*b from one of the stewardesses
Helluva thing to survive a crash like that, only to be killed by a ‘rescue vehicle’.