Fall From Plane Called a Likely Suicide

The Hewlett-Packard employee who fell to her death from a company commuter plane 2,000 feet above the state capital Thursday was deeply depressed and had been displaying suicidal tendencies, authorities said Saturday.

After interviewing her husband, the flight crew and other passengers on the corporate shuttle from Sacramento to San Jose, investigators have concluded that the death of Elisabeth M. Otto, 29, was most likely a suicide and that she had opened the plane’s door and plunged on her own.

A preliminary investigation has also determined that the confusion that followed Otto’s leap was apparently the result of shock among the witnesses and miscommunication caused by the deafening noise in the cabin after the door was opened. No one reported that she had jumped from the plane until they landed in San Jose.

Otto was a native of the Netherlands who had moved to California from Germany recently as part of her work for HP, the high-technology giant. Friends and co-workers told authorities she had not been happy, and her husband, Michael, told them he had been concerned about her state of mind. Worried, he was waiting in San Jose for her when the airplane landed Thursday night. Her body was found by a gardener Friday afternoon in a community plot in south Sacramento.

One of the five passengers on the 18-seat Havilland Twin Otter DHC-6 aircraft--all were fellow HP employees--realized Otto was trying to jump out of the plane and tried desperately to stop her, but it was too late. Amid the ear-splitting noise and wind penetrating the cabin, the man failed to corral Otto in a brief struggle and watched as she plunged to her death, authorities said.

After the tragedy, the man entered a state of shock. When a co-pilot noticed from his instruments that the door was open and entered the cabin to close it, passengers attempted to inform him that Otto had jumped from the plane, and thought they had. But with their shock and all the noise in the airplane, that message was not communicated, authorities said.

When the plane landed, the passengers asked the crew whether they needed to stay to answer questions, and were told to go. A flight mechanic in San Jose called 911 to report a missing woman at about 6:43 p.m., about 40 minutes after the plane landed. The Federal Aviation Administration had been alerted shortly beforehand.

“The passengers felt they had conveyed the information to the co-pilot,” said Lt. Robby Lake of the Sacramento Police Department, which was working with the FBI on the investigation. “But he did not understand them. As a result, nothing was done. Bizarre, that’s about all I can call it.”

The flight was routine for Hewlett-Packard, a shuttle that takes employees from a facility in Roseville to headquarters in Palo Alto. Otto, a purchasing agent, was among those who frequently traveled between the two locations. HP representatives provided grief counseling for their employees. Carly Fiorina, the company’s chief executive, drove to the San Jose Jet Center to await news with Otto’s husband.

The company released a statement saying it was “deeply saddened” by what happened and offered condolences to Otto’s colleagues and family. But it would not discuss whether there had been signs at work that Otto might be considering suicide. The Sacramento County coroner was still determining the official cause of death Saturday, but it was believed to be the impact of the fall.

It appears that Otto may have tried earlier to leap from the plane, authorities said. Shortly after the aircraft left Lincoln Regional Airport on Thursday, a pilot noticed a cockpit light suggesting the door was ajar and made an emergency landing at Sacramento Executive Airport about 4:45 p.m. to have it checked. It was found to be safe, and about 30 minutes later the plane departed again for San Jose.

Investigators now believe the warning light went off because Otto was attempting to pry open the door. When the plane took off the second time, they believe, Otto succeeded in forcing the door open, and her co-workers, who were nodding off or not paying attention, failed to notice until she was about to jump.