A Marine Corps KC-130T aircraft prepares to taxi in Yuma, Ariz., on April 11, 2015. According to reports on Saturday, July 6, 2024, a former engineer at Warner Robins in Georgia has been arrested in connection to a 2017 crash involving a KC-130T that killed 16 service members. (Jodson Graves/U.S. Marine Corps)
(Tribune News Service) — A former employee of an aircraft maintenance company in Warner Robins was recently arrested for obstruction of justice and making false statements during a criminal investigation of a fatal military plane crash in 2017, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
James Michael Fisher, 67, was arrested Tuesday after a federal grand jury in northern Mississippi indicted him. Fisher faces up to 20 years in prison if he is convicted on the two false statements and two obstruction of justice charges.
The indictment states that Fisher, who was a former lead propulsion engineer at the Warner Robins Logistics Center at the time, engaged in a pattern of conduct intended to avoid scrutiny for his past engineering decisions related to the aerial crash that claimed the lives of 16 service members, prosecutors said in a news release.
Fifteen Marines and one Navy corpsman were killed on July 10, 2017, when a Marine Corps KC-130T transport aircraft known as “Yanky 72” crashed in a delta soybean field near Itta Bena, Mississippi.
The indictment alleges that Fisher knowingly concealed key engineering documents from criminal investigators and made false statements to investigators about his past engineering decisions.
Fisher was a resident of Warner Robins but currently resides in Portugal.
The Air Force Office of Special Investigations, Defense Criminal Investigative Service and Naval Criminal Investigative Service are investigating the case, according to the press release.
Assistant U.S. attorneys Scott Leary and Philip Levy are prosecuting the case.
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