Investigators Locate Bodies In Caiifornia Air Ambulance Crash
A recovery team worked on a steep, rocky mountainside near the U.S.-Mexico border Monday to remove the bodies of five people killed when their air ambulance crashed shortly after takeoff.
SAN DIEGO (AP) -- A recovery team worked on a steep, rocky mountainside near the U.S.-Mexico border Monday to remove the bodies of five people, including a Texan, killed when their air ambulance crashed shortly after takeoff.
The National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration were investigating the Sunday morning crash that claimed the lives of a paramedic from El Paso, Texas, and four Albuquerque, N.M., residents _ two pilots and a married couple who worked as a nurse and paramedic.
A recovery team located the remains of the five victims Monday under drizzly conditions. A San Diego County Sheriff's helicopter moved the bodies to a site where ground vehicles were able to receive them, spokeswoman Susan Plese said.
``The terrain is pretty much straight up and down, and it's a lot of rock and scrub brush,'' she said.
The Learjet belonging to Albuquerque-based Med Flight Air Ambulance Inc. crashed into Otay Mountain shortly after taking off from Brown Field in clear weather about 12:30 a.m. Sunday. Television images showed the debris scattered amid rock formations.
The crew was returning to Albuquerque after picking up a patient on a cruise ship off the coast of Mexico and dropping the person off in San Diego.
The plane was one minute into the flight when radio contact was lost.
The victims were identified as pilot Karl A. Kolb, 56; co-pilot K. John Lamphere, 30; nurse Laura A. Womble, 47, and her husband, Donald, 45, a paramedic; and paramedic Marco E. Villalobos, 33. Villalobos was from El Paso.
The crash site is about a half-mile south of the site where a 1991 plane crash claimed the lives of seven members of country singer Reba McEntire's band, as well as two other people, Plese said, citing officials at the scene Monday.
In the 1991 crash, a federal appeals court found the pilot responsible, setting aside a jury verdict that divided blame between pilot Donald T. Holmes and two Brown Field air traffic controllers who allegedly failed to warn Holmes about the 3,566-foot peak.
