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Murder charges filed in wildfire
Compiled from Times wires
© St. Petersburg Times, SAN JOSE, Calif. -- In a rare move, prosecutors filed murder charges against a man in the deaths of two pilots whose firefighting planes collided as they battled a blaze that may have broken out at an illegal drug lab in the woods. Frank Brady, 50, of Redwood Valley, will be arraigned today on two counts of homicide, Mendocino County District Attorney Norman Vroman said. He also was charged with one count of attempted manufacture of methamphetamine. A second suspect, 43-year-old Richard Mortensen, was arrested on a variety of outstanding warrants for drug, theft and weapons charges, Vroman said. And although murder charges in the deaths of people fighting forest fires may be rare, Vroman said it's not unusual to file homicide charges against a person who has "committed an inherently dangerous act in which someone dies." Legal experts agreed that murder charges were not out of line in this case. "It fits perfectly in with the legal concept that if you commit a felony and that felony results in death, then you can be prosecuted for murder," said Peter Keane, dean of the Golden Gate Law School and a former public defender. Investigators spent Tuesday trying to determine whether the men had been operating a drug lab at the site where the fire began, Undersheriff Gary Hudson said. The two planes collided Monday evening near Hopland, about 100 miles north of San Francisco, while dumping fire retardant on the 250-acre wildfire. Killed were retired Navy veteran Larry Groff, 55, and Lars Stratte, 45. The pilots were flying alone in Korean War-era Grumman S-2 planes when they clipped each other during a pass over the fire. Among the witnesses was Jim Wattenburger, who was in charge of fighting the blaze. He said he was discussing the fire with a colleague when he looked up and saw Stratte's crippled plane hurtling right toward him. Wattenburger said he looked right into the cockpit at Stratte. "There were two or three seconds when he was staring at me and I was staring at him. . . . He was fighting to maintain control of the aircraft," he said. "The closer he got to the ground, his mouth got wider and wider and his eyes got bigger and bigger," said Wattenburger, who had to choke back tears as he recounted an image he said he will relive forever. He dived behind a truck and the plane crashed about 100 feet away. The other crashed about a quarter-mile away. Another witness, pilot Bob Valette, had trained both men. He said the firefighting efforts had been routine. "No limits were pushed here at all," he said. "It was actually a ho-hum fire." The cause of the collision was under investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board. The blaze has destroyed at least 12 structures and threatened more than a dozen others. It was about 60 percent contained Tuesday. The two pilots were employed by San Joaquin Helicopters of Delano. The NTSB lists six accidents since 1995 involving aircraft operated by the company. In Southern California, authorities were investigating whether an arsonist started an 1,800-acre brush fire that destroyed at least one house in the hills north of Los Angeles and burned within feet of luxury homes. In Montana, Glacier National Park officials closed four campgrounds and banned trips into parts of the backcountry Tuesday as firefighters battled a 14,000-acre blaze west of the park. Fires also burned across parts of several other states in the West, including Idaho, Nevada, Washington and Wyoming. - Information from the Associated Press and Knight Ridder was used in this report.
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From the Times wire desk
From the AP |
