Those who were killed after a UPS plane went down in flames in Louisville earlier this month were identified by authorities on Wednesday as the investigation into the crash continues.
Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg, alongside the city’s coroner, identified each of the 14 victims during a press conference. Greenberg said that Louisville “feels the full weight of this unimaginable tragedy.” Eleven of the people who were killed in the crash were on the ground and happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when the UPS MD-11 plane went down after takeoff on November 4.
Among those killed was 47-year-old Louisnes Fedon and his 3-year-old granddaughter, Kimberly Asa, WLWT reported. The other victims were identified as Capt. Dana Diamond, 62, Capt. Richard Wartenberg, 57, First Officer Lee Truitt, 45, Angela Anderson, 45, Carlos Fernandez, 52, Trinadette “Trina” Chavez, 37, Tony Crain, 65, John Loucks, 52, John Spray, 45, Matthew Sweets, 37, Ella Petty Whorton, 31, Megan Washburn, 35.
“Each of these victims represents a life full of purpose, interrupted far too soon. And also, a life that will never fade because we’ll always remember them,” the mayor added.
Diamond, Wartenberg, and Truitt made up the flight crew of the MD-11, while everyone else who was killed in the crash was either a customer or employee of Grade A Auto Parts and Scrap Metal Recycling, according to the business’s owner, Sean Garber, NBC News reported. The business is just south of the runways at Louisville’s Muhammad Ali International Airport, where the UPS plane took off en route to Hawaii.
Video footage taken just before the crash showed the aircraft’s left wing burst into flames. The plane, which had around 50,000 gallons of fuel for the long trip to Hawaii, then exploded into a massive fireball when it crashed. National Transportation Safety Board Member Todd Inman said last week that the footage “shows the left engine detaching from the wing during the takeoff roll.”
Authorities still have not said what caused the crash, but UPS and FedEx said last week that they were grounding their fleets of MD-11 cargo planes “out of an abundance of caution.” NTSB anticipates issuing a preliminary investigation report into the crash by early December.
Crews in Louisville continue to work on the site of the crash and have stopped oil from the crash from seeping into the city’s groundwater.
