Witnesses Focus on Jet’s Low Altitude Before Crash

A Marine jet was flying so low before it clipped an Italian gondola cable that people on the ground cowered and covered their heads, witnesses testified Thursday.

“I bent down. I covered, because I saw a danger for myself. I could see the plane very well on my eye level,” Patricia Pichler, an Italian, said through a translator.

She said she was watching her children take ski lessons Feb. 3, 1998, on Mt. Cermis when the EA-6B Prowler sliced the cable at 360 feet, sending the gondola crashing to the ground, killing 20 people.

The pilot, Capt. Richard Ashby, 31, of Mission Viejo, is being court-martialed on charges including 20 counts of involuntary manslaughter. If convicted, he could get more than 200 years in prison.

Other residents of the area around Luson, Italy, recalled their terror as the jet roared down the Alpine valley. Prosecutors have said the jet was going 621 mph when it hit the cable.

Maria Luise Messner said the jet appeared to clear an electrical tower beside the ski slope by about 30 feet. “I thought, ‘My God, how could an airplane fly that low, that it is even possible for it to fly like that?’ ”

Alexander Angerer, a snowboard instructor, said he thought the Prowler pilot was “crazy” because the jet flew so low and then descended, following the slope of the mountain.

On Wednesday, 16-year-old Andrea Mover testified that the jet rustled treetops as it swooped over the valley.

Defense attorneys contend Ashby is being made a scapegoat by the Marine Corps to conceal errors by his superiors, including a government map that didn’t show the ski lift and a malfunctioning altitude gauge on the Prowler.