rwandan-flyer.blog4ever.com

Article by AP, pictures by linear concepts : here

On 03 December 1987 a  Cooper Skybird Air Charters (Kenya)  Cessna 404 ( a similair aircraft that on the picture above) crashed in Rwanda, shortly after the take off, from Goma (Republic Democratic of Congo).

A small plane carrying 12 Americans on a safari to photograph gorillas slammed into a mountainside in northwestern Rwanda, killing the tourists and their Kenyan pilot, officials said Friday.

Some of the passengers screamed and frantically threw their belongings out of the plane as it careened out of control before crashing about 4 p.m. local time Thursday, according to witnesses quoted by Rwanda's government-owned radio.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Charles Redman identified the Americans as

Thomas Askelson of Sycamore, Ill.;

Jill Cowan of The Woodlands, Tex.;

Andrew Foster of Flint, Mich.; Franz (Rick) Heber of Monument,

Colo.; Daniel Schwartz of Tampa, Fla., and

Ernest Farino,

Shirley Farino,

Becky Fergerson,

Nancy Gerald,

Mary Slater,

Donald Wilberforce

Thelma Yambao, all of Amarillo,

Tex. Yambo, a Filipino, became a U.S. citizen last month.

Gene White, spokesman for Texas Tech Health Sciences Center in Amarillo, said Yambao was on the obstetrics and gynecology faculty at the school; Slater, 37, on the pediatrics faculty, and Schwartz, 45, on the obstetrics-gynecology clinical faculty.