Drug tests clean for Asiana responders who may have run over victim
Each of the five apparatus operators who responded to Saturday’s Asiana Flight 214 crash at San Francisco International Airport tested negative for drugs or alcohol, San Francisco Fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White said Monday.
In an interview with The Times, Hayes-White said her department’s own internal inquiry is underway after department officials learned an apparatus responding to Saturday’s plane crash may have “contacted” one of the two teenage girls killed.
The inquiry includes the drug and alcohol screening as well as interviewing “all of the members that were in the area on the apparatus,” Hayes-White said.
An investigation headed by the National Transportation Safety Board is also underway.
After fire officials became aware of the incident, they notified San Francisco Police Chief Greg Suhr, whose major accident team responded to the crash site, as well as the FBI, which was also at the scene.
Fire officials said Sunday that one of the victims had “injuries that were consistent with having been run over by a vehicle.”
Two 16-year-old girls from China were found dead on the tarmac after the crash, which also seriously injured dozens of travelers.
One was seemingly ejected from the plane when it struck a sea wall near the runway and broke apart. The other was found near the wreckage of the plane, San Mateo County Coroner Robert J. Foucrault said Sunday.
Asiana Airlines identified the victims as Wang Linjia and Ye Mengyuan. The two were part of a student group from Jiangshan Middle School in China’s eastern Zhejiang province, according to Chinese media reports.
Asiana Flight 214 originated in Shanghai and stopped in Seoul before flying to San Francisco International Airport, where it crash-landed, killing the students and injuring more than 180.
The cause of death for both girls will be determined by the coroner’s office.
Autopsy results are expected soon.
Foucrault said Sunday that fire officials had mentioned the possibility of the accident to his investigators, but that nothing is known yet.
“The reason we do autopsies is to determine a cause of death,” Foucrault said. “What we are trying to do is determine whether this young lady died of an airline crash or of a secondary incident. If it does involve a secondary incident, the people who may be involved should be aware of it, as well as the family.”
When asked Monday how her department was coping with the possibility that one of its vehicles struck the victim, Hayes-White said she didn’t want to “speculate on the possibility that that might have happened.”
“Two lives were lost,” she said. “Two 16-year-old girls, with their lives ahead of them, and that’s difficult in and of itself.”
She continued: “We’ll deal with what we need to deal with at the conclusion of the investigation.”
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