Autopsies Show Some on Jet Were Alive Before Crash

Autopsies showed that at least six of the 121 people aboard a Cypriot plane were alive when the aircraft crashed into a hillside near here, a coroner said Monday.

As the investigation of Sunday’s crash continued, police raided the offices of Helios Airways in Larnaca, the Cypriot city where the flight originated, seeking “evidence which could be useful for the investigation into possible criminal acts,” Cypriot presidential spokesman Marios Karoyian said.

Greek aviation officials have said Flight 522 apparently lost pressure suddenly, causing a rapid loss of oxygen. The 115 passengers and six crew members would have had only seconds to put on oxygen masks before losing consciousness.

Two fighter jet pilots who flew to assist the plane saw the co-pilot slumped over, oxygen masks in the plane dangling, and two unidentified people trying to gain control of the jet. The pilot was not in his seat when the plane crashed, about 2 1/2 hours after the crew radioed that the craft had air-conditioning problems, officials said. The bodies of the pilot and two other people were still being sought.

Athens’ chief coroner, Fillipos Koutsaftis, said he could not determine whether the six people whose bodies were examined were conscious when the Boeing 737-300 plunged 34,000 feet into a mountainous area near the village of Grammatiko, 25 miles north of Athens.

“Our conclusion is they had circulation and were breathing at the time of death,” Koutsaftis said. “I cannot rule out that they were unconscious.”

Greek and Cypriot officials have ruled out terrorism.

Investigators were to be joined by U.S. experts and were sending the plane’s data and cockpit voice recorders to France for examination.

Akrivos Tsolakis, the head of the Greek airline safety committee, said the voice recorder was damaged “and possibly it won’t give us the information we need.”

In a related development, police in northern Greece arrested a man who claimed to have received a cellphone text message from a passenger. The man -- identified as Nektarios-Sotirios Voutas, 32 -- told Greek television stations that his cousin on the plane had sent him a farewell message minutes before the crash.

But authorities determined Voutas was lying, and arrested him on charges of dissemination of false information.