In 2019, the world of soccer shook with the untimely death of the Argentine striker Emiliano Sala, 28 years old, that he was going to join the Cardiff City club, to which he had been transferred from French Nantes.
The body of Emiliano Sala it was found more than two weeks after the accident. His mortal remains were repatriated in February 2019 to Argentina.
After more than seven hours of deliberations, the popular jury found David Henderson guilty and his sentence will be announced on November 12. Henderson faces a five-year jail sentence.
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You could also be sentenced to two years in prison for the carriage of a passenger without proper authorization, a charge of which Henderson himself was found guilty, so the jury did not rule on the matter.
The small private plane aboard which were the Argentine forward and the pilot David Ibbotson suffered an accident in the English Channel on January 21, 2019. The body of the 59-year-old pilot was not found.
According to the version of the prosecution during the process, the defendant was supposed to pilot the aircraft at first, but when he was on vacation in Paris with his wife, he entrusted the transport to Ibbotson. The latter did not have a commercial pilot license, his qualification for this type of aircraft had expired and he did not have the competence required to perform night flights.
In their final report, published in March 2020, British air crash investigators they estimated that the pilot had lost control of the aircraft during a maneuver carried out at too high a speed, “probably” intended to avoid bad weather.
(You can also read: Despite Sala’s death, they force Cardiff FC to pay a million for him)
The Welsh court dismissed the defense arguments David Henderson, tried for having organized the flight, who said Tuesday that his involvement in the drama was limited to “a simple matter of paperwork”, rejecting all recklessness.
In his closing arguments, attorney Stephen Spence He denied that his client acted in a “reckless” manner, stating that the reproaches to his client about the regulation referred to “purely a matter of paperwork” and that this had not really led to jeopardizing the flight.
Spence noted that Ibbotson, an experienced pilot with more than 3,500 lap hours, was “legally responsible for the safety” of the trip.
The lawyer also said that the only difference between a business license and a private one is the ability to make passengers pay and it has nothing to do with the capabilities of the pilot.
The air carrier certificate, which it is not “more than a magic piece of paper that allows you to make people pay”as Spence put it, “it doesn’t have much to do with danger or the absence of danger.”
“If you are rich, you can transport your family, your friends and colleagues without a certificate on your jet, on the condition that they do not pay,” he added.
In their final report, published in March 2020, the British air accident investigators estimated that the pilot had lost control of the aircraft during a maneuver carried out at too high a speed, “probably” intended to avoid bad weather.
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