Posted on 02/27/2004 5:33:02 PM PST by mylife
Grieving man's revenge?
Air traffic controller at centre of 2002 plane collision is killed, apparently by man who lost family in the crash
ZURICH - The police are still piecing together details after making an arrest, but if their theory is right, the grief for both men was fathomless.
One, identified as Mr Peter Nielsen, was the air traffic controller on duty on July 1, 2002 when 71 people, including 45 Russian schoolchildren on a vacation trip to Spain, were killed in a collision of two planes in Swiss airspace.
He took several months off work. His colleagues said he was haunted by the crash and the deaths of the children and he never went back to work in the control tower.
The other man, aged 48, lost his wife, a daughter and a son on the trip. On Wednesday, police detained him on suspicion of murdering Mr Nielsen, stabbing him repeatedly at his home, apparently in revenge for the loss of his family.
The police would not reveal his name. Two Russian families on the flight lost a mother, son and daughter.
Mr Pascal Gossner, the Zurich judge who is investigating the case, told a news conference that the suspect was calm after he was arrested, but it was clear he had not overcome his grief.
The judge declined to say whether the suspect may have been further embittered by drawn-out negotiations for compensation with the Swiss air traffic control agency, Skyguide.
He said the man denied the killing and said he had an alibi.
Mr Gossner said the victim's wife and neighbours had provided key details that led to the suspect's arrest.
They said the killer was stocky, spoke broken German, could have been of East European origin, had greying black hair, was unshaven and wore black clothes.
Mr Gossner said the suspect fit the description.
He said the man had arrived in Switzerland shortly before the killing, had visited Switzerland only once before and had no connection with the country.
He also said the suspect was the only relative of those who died in the mid-air plane collision present in Switzerland at the time of the killing.
The judge's account says the killer arrived near the victim's house in the suburb of Kloten early on Tuesday evening and asked a neighbour where Mr Nielsen lived.
The suspect then 'drew attention to himself' outside the apartment.
Mr Nielsen's wife, Mette, who was at home at the time, told investigators that her husband went out onto the terrace to find out what was going on.
She heard a brief exchange of words and 'a kind of scream' and raced out to see her husband fall to the ground.
Mr Nielsen was stabbed repeatedly, his heart, lungs and other organs badly injured. The suspect fled on foot.
The police believe the weapon was a 22cm-long flick knife that they recovered.
The suspect was arrested in a guest house in Kloten.
Mr Nielsen's identity was kept secret under Swiss privacy laws, but it was widely reported by the Danish media.
He was alone in the control room when the accident took place.
Preliminary reports have determined that the controller told the Russian plane to descend, contradicting the plane's collision-avoidance system, which instructed it to climb.
It slammed into a DHL cargo plane, which was also descending in accordance with its own system's instructions.
Mr Nielsen leaves behind three children and his wife.
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