Associated Press, "U.S. pilots
indicted in Gol Airlines Brazil crash"
A federal judge indicted two U.S. pilots and
four Brazilian air traffic controllers on manslaughter-related charges
Friday in Brazil's worst air disaster, court officials said. Judge Murilo
Mendes accepted the charges filed by a prosecutor last week in a federal
court in Sinop, a small city near the Amazon jungle site where a Boeing
jetliner last year plunged into the rain forest after a collision with
an executive jet. All 154 people aboard the jetliner died, while the
executive jet landed safely.
"Now the criminal process begins," court spokesman Fabio Paz
said by telephone. The American pilots have been called on to give preliminary
depositions on Aug. 27 and the flight controllers have been called to testify
a day later, said Paz.
Pilots Joseph
Lepore, 42, of Bay Shore, N.Y., and Jan Paladino, 34, of Westhampton Beach,
N.Y., were charged with exposing an aircraft to danger resulting in death.
Paz said the charge is similar to involuntary manslaughter and is punishable
by one to three years in prison. A lawyer for the pilots said the charges
were unfounded.
