Posted on 12/25/2007 7:27:00 PM PST by RDTF
Panama City, Panama (AP) -- The bodies of a California businessman, his teenage daughter and the Panamanian pilot of a plane that crashed over the weekend were found Tuesday in Panama's mountains, officials said. A 12-year-old American girl survived.
Michael Klein, 37, Talia Klein, 13, and pilot Edwin Lasso, 23, were found dead in a mountainous region of Panama known as Las Ovejas, about 270 miles west of the capital, the civil protection agency said.
Francesca Lewis, a friend of Talia's who was traveling with the Kleins, survived and was hospitalized with hypothermia and multiple traumas, the agency said in a statement. The severity of her injuries was not immediately clear.
Aviation authorities said the cause of the crash was not yet known, but RPC radio reported that witnesses saw the plane flying at a very low altitude around noon Sunday amid buffeting winds.
The group's plane disappeared en route from Islas Secas, off Panama's Pacific coast, to the Chiriqui volcano, about 285 miles (460 kilometers) west of the capital, Panama City.
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
How sad. I’m so sorry for all their friends and family.
from article:
Michael Klein was the chief executive officer of Pacificore LLC, a Santa Barbara-based company that manages several hedge funds and founded two companies in the 1990s before becoming president and CEO of eGroups Inc., which was the world’s largest group e-mail communication service.
Yahoo Inc. purchased eGroups for $450 million in August 2000 and it is now known as Yahoo Group
Very sad. But incidentally it does in a tangential way point out how Panama is really thriving, and attracting lots of capital and entrepreneurs. The country has really taken off in the last decade, and is by no means your typical third world banana republic any more. It’s well worth a visit, I highly recommend it.
very sad
Ping.
RIP.
I read a recent article in The Economist. Yes, it has come a long way since “The Pineapple” had his foot on it’s neck.
I can’t help but wonder if this will turn out to be yet another case of the pilot saying “We can’t fly today” and the boss saying “F***k you, we’re flying today.”
Or it might be a case of "You want to fly today Boss? Uh, sure, sure, we can fly today Boss!"
The missing plane was headed for an airport in Volcan in Chiriqui when its signal vanished from radar screens at about noon, Palacios said.
Klein has owned the island for about five years and makes frequent trips to the resort, which also offers rentals, Benjamin said.
``We are very, very optimistic of the outcome,’’ Benjamin said. ``Michael is highly skilled in these situations. He’s tracked these forests. He’s a long-distance runner and in extremely good physical shape to care for himself, the young girls and the pilot. He’s extremely brilliant.’’
Klein, who graduated from college at the age of 17, started MIBEK Corp., a developer of financial analysis software, which was acquired in 1992. Hewlett-Packard Co. bought his software company Transoft Networks Inc. in 1999, according to the Pacificor Web site.
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Klein, a 37-year-old hedge fund manager, was vacationing with the two girls when they took the flight Sunday to photograph a volcano in the Chiriqui province, about 285 miles west of Panama City.
Authorities think the small single-engine Cessna ran into bad weather. Officials lost radio contact with the flight about noon Sunday.
wow. I am speechless. All those accomplishments at such an early age. Truly a terrible loss.
I was stationed in Panama for three years in the 1980s. There were all kinds of signs that it would eventually become a magnet for private investment. The bank sector there makes it easy to quietly hide money and invest in local programs and projects. Land ownership was a huge factor in those days because there were vast amounts of land...which no one knew the true owner...and the government didn’t want to help in tracking ownership down. We had a guy who found a four-acre trek of property overlooking the Pacific Ocean. In the states...it would have been well over $1 million...but the local guys valued it at $10k...but the problem was that the government couldn’t determine the rightful owner. The negative of Panama...snakes...lots of them.
she suffered multiple traumas and hypothermia, and cold, wet weather prevented authorities from evacuating her immediately from the crash site on the slope of a remote volcano.
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Rescuers were giving medical attention to Francesca Lewis — a friend of Talia’s who was traveling with the Kleins — in a makeshift shelter, said civil protection official Jose Henriquez, who is handling the case.
“They’re warming her and we hope to be able to get her out sometime tonight to a hospital,” Henriquez said by telephone from Boquete in Chiriqui state, adding that he did not have enough information to say whether her life was in danger. “It’s raining and it’s very cold.”
Officials had said earlier that Lewis had already been taken to a hospital in David, the capital of Chiriqui.
******
Benjamin said Klein was close to his daughter.
“Her father was so proud of her,” he said. “She was an amazing, accomplished horseback rider — just an absolute winner. Solid, solid young girl.”
The fourth passenger, 12-year-old American Francesca Lewis, survived the crash but suffered broken bones and hypothermia, he said.
“It’s a miracle the girl survived because the plane was smashed to pieces,” Roberto Velasquez, head of the government civil protection agency, told Reuters. He said her condition was stable.
Lewis was being moved by land to a hospital, de la Hoz told Reuters.
Klein and the two girls were in Panama vacationing at the businessman’s private island in the Gulf of Chiriqui. Klein, 37, of Santa Barbara, California, was chief executive of U.S. hedge fund Pacificor.
This is good to hear....we’re going to be there about the middle of next month. Do you know anything about the new Intercontinental resort?
fyi
I wonder if the mother flying there and offering the 25K reward for finding the plane had anything to do with finding the young girl in time to save her?
Them little airplanes will kill you dead.
So will little cars, little motor cycles, little brains
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