GREENVILLE, Miss. (AP) — 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.
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