A former employee at Robins Air Force Base in Georgia has been arrested by the federal government and is accused of obstructing an investigation into a deadly 2017 aircraft crash in Mississippi that killed 15 Marines and one sailor.
James Michael Fisher, 67, was arrested July 2, according to a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Mississippi. The former propulsion engineer with the base’s C-130 program was living in Portugal at the time of the indictment, which was issued by a federal grand jury.
While court documents were not immediately available Monday, a press release from the U.S. attorney’s office alleged that the former Robins Air Force Base employee “knowingly concealed key engineering documents from criminal investigators and made materially false statements to criminal investigators about his past engineering decisions.”
Read Next: NATO Chief Sidesteps Questions on Biden’s Fitness to Lead Alliance Against Putin
The federal government added that Fisher “engaged in a pattern of conduct intended to avoid scrutiny for his past engineering decisions related to why the crash may have occurred.”
Fisher’s arrest comes nearly seven years to the day after the July 10, 2017, crash. The Marine Corps KC-130 with the call sign “Yanky 72” was carrying 15 Marines and one Navy sailor on board when it went down in a soybean field in Leflore County, Mississippi.
While flying to California at 20,000 feet…
