ZAGREB, January 29, 2020 – Croatian Air Force Commander General Michael Križanec said on Tuesday that the Air Force had contacted the US Army and the Bell company and was given instructions on how to preserve evidence from the Kiowa Warrior helicopter that crashed into the sea off Šibenik during a training exercise on Monday, killing two pilots on board.
Speaking at a news conference at the Zemunik air base, Križanec said that the instructions were about how to preserve certain evidence, how to handle it and where to send it.
He added that it was up to the investigating team and the chief Air Force investigator to decide when and where certain physical evidence would be sent to obtain good analyses and information.
The investigating team has found the flight recorder, which was at the bottom of the sea for more than 24 hours.
The head of the team investigating the accident and chief Air Force investigator, Colonel Mario Počinok, said that the team would use all resources of the homeland security system in its work.
“The US side has offered help and we are not ruling out that we will accept it,” he said.
“The helicopter was flying very low, at a height of between zero and 100 metres. The accompanying helicopter was between 150 and 200 metres behind the helicopter that crashed. It will not be easy, but we think that we will manage to reconstruct the event,” Počinok said, adding that there were no video recordings of the flight in the two helicopters.
The head of the Operations Command Centre, General Krešo Tuškan, said that three larger parts of the helicopter wreckage were retrieved yesterday and that the remaining fragments were expected to be retrieved on Wednesday.
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