61 dead in Brazil plane crash, local officials say
A passenger plane crashed into a gated residential community in Brazil’s São Paulo state Friday, killing all 61 people on board and leaving a smoldering wreck, officials and the airline said.
Officials did not say if anyone was killed on the ground in the neighbourhood where the plane crashed in the city of Vinhedo, about 80 kilometres northwest of the metropolis of São Paulo. But witnesses at the scene said there were no victims among local residents.
The airline, VoePass, said that the ATR 72-500 twin-engine turboprop was headed for São Paulo’s international airport Guarulhos with 57 passengers and four crew members aboard when it crashed in Vinhedo. It provided a flight manifest with passenger names, but not their nationalities. A prior statement had said there were 58 passengers.
“The company regrets to inform that all 61 people on board flight 2283 died at the site,” VoePass said in a statement. “At this time, VoePass is prioritizing provision of unrestricted assistance to the victims’ families and effectively collaborating with authorities to determine the causes of the accident.”
At an event in southern Brazil, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva asked the crowd to stand and observe a minute of silence as he shared the news. Friday evening, he declared three days of mourning.
Black box recovered, official says
The state’s firefighters, military police and the civil defence authority dispatched teams to the location. São Paulo’s public security secretary, Guilherme Derrite, spoke to reporters and confirmed that no survivors had been found. He also said the plane’s black box was recovered.
Parana state’s Gov. Ratinho Júnior told journalists in Vinhedo that many of the passengers were doctors from his state attending a seminar.
“They were people who were used to saving lives, and now they lost theirs in such tragic circumstances,” Júnior said, adding he had friends on board. “It is a sad day.”
Brazilian television network GloboNews showed aerial footage of an area on fire with smoke coming out of an obliterated plane fuselage. Additional footage on GloboNews showed the plane plunging into a flat spin.
Authorities began transferring victims to the morgue on Friday, and called on family members to bring medical, X-ray and dental records that could be used to help identify their loved ones.
French-Italian plane manufacturer ATR said in a statement that it had been informed that the accident involved its ATR 72-500 model, and said company specialists are “fully engaged to support both the investigation and the customer.”
The Capela neighbourhood where the plane crashed sits in a district far from the centre of the prosperous city that’s home to 77,000 residents.
The plane departed from Cascavel, in the state of Parana.
Published at Fri, 09 Aug 2024 19:20:22 +0000
20-year-sentence handed down to U.S. Capitol rioter David Nicholas Dempsey
A California man with a history of political violence was sentenced on Friday to 20 years in prison for repeatedly attacking police with flagpoles and other makeshift weapons during the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol.
David Nicholas Dempsey’s sentence is among the longest of hundreds of Capitol riot prosecutions.
Prosecutors described him as one of the most violent members of the mob of Donald Trump supporters that attacked the Capitol as lawmakers met to certify U.S. President Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.
Dempsey, who is from Van Nuys, Calif., stomped on police officers’ heads. He swung poles at officers defending a tunnel, struck an officer in the head with a metal crutch and attacked police with pepper spray and broken pieces of furniture, prosecutors said.
He climbed atop other rioters, using them like “human scaffolding” to reach officers guarding a tunnel entrance. He injured at least two police officers, prosecutors said.
‘Exceptionally egregious’ conduct: judge
“Your conduct on January 6th was exceptionally egregious,” U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth told Dempsey. “You did not get carried away in the moment.”
Dempsey pleaded guilty in January to two counts of assaulting police officers with a dangerous weapon.
Only former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio has received a longer sentence in the Jan. 6 attack. Tarrio was sentenced to 22 years for orchestrating a plot to stop the peaceful transfer of power from Trump to Biden after the 2020 presidential election.
Dempsey called his conduct “reprehensible” and apologized to the police officers whom he assaulted.
“You were performing your duties, and I responded with hostility and violence,” he said, before learning his sentence.
Prosecutors sought longer sentence
U.S. Justice Department prosecutors recommended a prison sentence of 21 years and 10 months for Dempsey, a former construction worker and fast-food restaurant employee.
Dempsey’s violence was so extreme that he attacked a fellow rioter who was trying to disarm him, prosecutors wrote.
“David Dempsey is political violence personified,” assistant U.S. attorney Douglas Brasher told the judge.
Defence attorney Amy Collins, who sought a sentence of 6 years and six months, described the government’s sentencing recommendation as “ridiculous.”
“It makes him a statistic,” she said. “It doesn’t consider the person he is, how much he has grown.”
Dempsey was wearing a tactical vest, a helmet and an American flag gaiter covering his face when he attacked police at a tunnel leading to the Lower West Terrace doors. He shot pepper spray at Metropolitan Police Department Detective Phuson Nguyen just as another rioter yanked at the officer’s gas mask.
“The searing spray burned Detective Nguyen’s lungs, throat, eyes, and face and left him gasping for breath, fearing he might lose consciousness and be overwhelmed by the mob,” prosecutors wrote.
Dempsey then struck MPD Sgt. Jason Mastony in the head with a metal crutch, cracking the shield on his gas mask and cutting his head.
“I collapsed and caught myself against the wall as my ears rang. I was able to stand again and hold the line for a few more minutes until another assault by rioters pushed the police line back away from the threshold of the tunnel,” Mastony said in a statement submitted to the court.
Prior burglary, theft, assault convictions
Dempsey has been jailed since his arrest in August 2021.
His criminal record in California includes convictions for burglary, theft and assault. The assault conviction stemmed from an October 2019, gathering near the Santa Monica Pier, where Dempsey attacked people peacefully demonstrating against then-U.S. president Trump, prosecutors said.
“The peaceful protest turned violent as Dempsey took a canister of bear spray from his pants and dispersed it at close range against several protesters,” they wrote, noting that Dempsey was sentenced to 200 days of jail time.
Dempsey engaged in at least three other acts of “vicious political violence” that didn’t lead to criminal charges “for various reasons,” according to prosecutors.
They said Dempsey struck a counter-protester over the head with a skateboard at a June 2019 rally in Los Angeles, used the same skateboard to assault someone at an August 2020 protest in Tujunga, Calif., and attacked a protester with pepper spray and a metal bat during another August 2020 protest in Beverly Hills, Calif.
More than 1,400 people have been charged with Jan. 6-related federal crimes. Over 900 of them have been convicted and sentenced, with roughly two-thirds receiving terms of imprisonment ranging from a few days to the 22 years that Tarrio received.
Published at Fri, 09 Aug 2024 20:39:26 +0000
