'Copter Crash Victims Named

Casualties in the last Saturday helicopter disaster have now been announced alongside measures the authorities are taking to avoid reoccurrence of the unfortunate accident.

Defence Minister Dr. Addo Kufuor in a press briefing yesterday gave the names of the victims as Wing Commander Ben Acheampong, the pilot. Flt. Lt S. Lartey, co-pilot and Corporal Bosomfi, a technician.

Others included Corporal Akoensi Yao, also a technician, Corporal Adu Buxton and George Debrah, both patients and Victor Nyarko, the nurse.

The minister expressed condolences to the bereaved families on behalf of the government, adding that a date for befitting burials and funerals of the departed would be announced later.

For the avoidance of a repetition of the disaster in the near future, Dr. Addo Kufuor directed that all other aircraft of the Ghana Airforce should undergo stringent examination to ensure their air-worthiness.

He took issues with the section of the local media that published pictures of the casualties saying they were rather 'insensitive" to the plight of the bereaved families.

At the press conference, the Minister of Defence said that investigations were being conducted by competent authorities into the cause of the crash.

Meanwhile Chronicle investigations have come across a number of factors that could have also caused the crash.

According to a Burma Camp source, Wing Commander Acheampong who was flying the chopper, when it took off, was not a regular pilot of the Medevac Operations and has in fact not flown for a while.

But due to the inability of one of the regular pilots to fly that morning, he decided to go along and pilot the craft himself.

Chronicle gathered that the wing commander was at the controls when they left Accra.

The assumption of insiders is that since the wing commander was not a regular pilot, he was not conversant with the terrain, and coupled with the low visibility around the area, he flew into the tall trees in the Atewa Forest.