OXFORD, Madam — A former engineer at a U.S. military air logistics center has been charged with making false statements and obstructing justice during a criminal investigation into a 2017 crime. military plane crash in Mississippi that killed all 16 service members on board, prosecutors said Wednesday.
James Michael Fisher, 67, was arrested Tuesday after a federal grand jury in northern Mississippi indicted him, according to a news release from U.S. Attorney Clay Joyner.
The press release states that Fisher is a former chief propulsion engineer at the Warner Robins Air Logistics Complex in Warner Robins, Georgia. Fisher, who now lives in Portugal, made his initial court appearance in Jacksonville, Florida.
A spokesperson for the North Mississippi District Attorney’s Office said Wednesday she had no information yet on whether Fisher is represented by an attorney.
Fifteen Marines and one Navy corpsman were killed on July 10, 2017, when the Marine Corps KC-130T transport plane broke up in mid-air and crashed into a soybean field near Itta Bena, Mississippi.
The plane was based at Stewart Air National Guard Base in Newburgh, New York, and was carrying Marine Special Operations Forces from North Carolina to Arizona for training. The crash was the deadliest Marine Corps air disaster since 2005, when a transport helicopter went down during a sandstorm in Iraq, killing 30 Marines and a sailor.
According to Joyner’s press release, the indictment alleges that Fisher knowingly concealed engineering documents and made false statements to investigators about his engineering decisions that may have been related to the crash.
Fisher faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted of the two counts of false statements and two counts of obstruction of justice.
Three agencies investigating the crash joined federal prosecutors in announcing Fisher’s arrest. They are the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, the Defense Criminal Investigative Service and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service.