Family disputes suicide by pilot in Milan crash

Published 9:00 pm Sunday, April 21, 2002

Associated Press

ROME — Relatives of the pilot whose plane slammed into a Milan skyscraper ruled out suicide as the cause Sunday, and police said there was no conclusive evidence to support the theory that the pilot intended to kill himself.

Nevertheless, as the investigation ground on, Italian officials still expressed doubts that the crash was entirely accidental.

"It wasn’t suicide? Then we’ll call it voluntary collision," the Lombardy regional president, Roberto Formigioni, was quoted as saying in several Italian newspapers Sunday.

The pilot, Luigi Fasulo, and two others were killed when his plane struck the center of the landmark Pirelli tower. Two floors of the building were gutted in the Thursday’s crash, which rekindled images of the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States.

Italian authorities ruled out terrorism, but suggested three other possibilities: that the plane experienced mechanical problems, that the pilot fell ill at the controls, or that he killed himself.

An autopsy is planned for this week to determine if a sudden heart attack or another ailment might have led Fasulo to lose control of the aircraft.

The suicide theory first surfaced when the pilot’s son, Marco Fasulo, was quoted Friday by the Milan daily La Repubblica as saying his father may have committed suicide because of despair over his finances.

The elder Fasulo had recently been swindled out of $1.54 million by a group of business associates, one of whom was arrested in France hours after the crash in connection with an art-selling ring, Italian news reports said.

In their first statement since Thursday’s crash, Fasulo’s family acknowledged the slain pilot, nicknamed Gino, had been "duped by a band of swindlers."

Nevertheless, they said, he never would have taken his life as a result.

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