Engineer charged in connection with 2017 plane crash in Mississippi

ROBINS AIR FORCE BASE, Ga. — A former Warner Robins engineer has been arrested and charged with making false statements and obstruction of justice as part of the federal criminal investigation into a 2017 military plane crash that killed 16 service members.

According to a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Mississippi, a United States Marine Corps KC-130 transport aircraft known as “Yanky 72” crashed near Itta Bena, Mississippi in June 2017.

Fifteen Marines and a Navy medic died in the crash.

On Tuesday, 67-year-old James Fisher was arrested on an indictment by a grand jury in federal court in the Northern District of Mississippi.

The indictment states that Fisher, a former senior propulsion engineer at the Warner Robins Logistics Center, “engaged in a pattern of conduct designed to evade scrutiny of his prior engineering decisions related to the probable cause of the crash.”

The specific allegations made by the indictment state that Fisher “knowingly concealed important design documents from law enforcement officials and made material false statements to law enforcement officials about his prior design decisions.”

He is charged with two counts of making false statements and two counts of obstruction of justice. If convicted, Fisher faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. A federal district judge would determine the sentence, taking into account U.S. sentencing guidelines and other statutory factors.

13WMAZ and CBS reported on the crash back in 2017.

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According to earlier reports, the plane was flying at 20,000 feet when, without warning, a blade on the left inner propeller came off and tore through the fuselage – a 130-pound object traveling at nearly the speed of sound. The collision caused such great structural stress that the right inner propeller came off and shot into the fuselage. The cockpit was severed from the plane and fell to earth, followed shortly thereafter by the fuselage.

The plane that crashed belonged to a squadron commanded by Brigadier General Bradley James. He said the crew had no control of the aircraft.

“I think it was such a brutal action that they lost consciousness almost immediately,” James said.

The debris was scattered across five miles of soybean fields in Mississippi. An investigation found tiny corrosion pits that had developed over time into cracks that led to the failure of the first blade.

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“We traced this back to when it was revised around 2011 and it was not detected,” James said.

In 2011, the propeller underwent a scheduled overhaul at Robins Air Force Base.

A commander said at the time that the problems with the aircraft should have been recognized.

“The procedures that were in place in 2011, those procedures, if they were done properly, should have detected the corrosion in 2011,” said Brigadier General John Kubinec. “The corrosion should have been detected. Why that wasn’t done, we don’t know.”

The announcement was made by U.S. Attorney Clay Joyner for the Northern District of Mississippi, as well as the Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI), the Defense Criminal Investigative Service (DCIS), and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS).

AFOSI, DCIS and NCIS are investigating the case.

Assistant U.S. Attorneys Scott Leary and Philip Levy are prosecuting the case.