Mississippi jury acquits engineer accused of lying about 2017 military plane crash
ABC News
A federal jury in Mississippi has acquitted a former military aircraft engineer of lying and obstruction of justice following a deadly 2017 military place crash
GREENVILLE, Miss. -- A jury has acquitted a former engineer overseeing military aircraft maintenance of charges of making false statements and obstructing justice during the criminal investigation of a 2017 military plane crash in Mississippi that killed all 16 service members aboard.
James Michael Fisher was found not guilty Thursday after an eight-day trial in federal court in Greenville, Mississippi.
Fisher had been the lead propulsion engineer at the Warner Robins Air Logistics Complex in Warner Robins, Georgia, in 2011. That's when military investigators said civilian maintenance personnel failed to find defects in a cracked and corroded propeller blade that was installed on a KC-130T transport plane. Investigators said that propeller blade broke apart while the New York-based plane was in flight from Cherry Point, North Carolina to El Centro, California on July 10, 2017.
Fifteen Marines and one Navy corpsman were killed when the propeller blade slammed into the aircraft body, causing a shock that broke the plane into pieces in the sky and sent the wreckage plummeting into soybean fields near Itta Bena, Mississippi.
A federal grand jury in Mississippi indicted Fisher in 2024, who by then had retired. The indictment accused Fisher of lying to federal agents about changes to inspection procedures during a 2021 investigation, suggesting he was part of a cover-up that shifted blame to maintenance technicians.
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