By KERA News & Wire Services
Dallas, TX – A National Transportation Safety Board official says a team of 10 has been assembled to investigate the air medical helicopter crash that killed two on board.
NTSB air safety investigator Tom Latson says it's too early to say why a CareFlite helicopter went down in a rural area southwest of Dallas during a maintenance run Wednesday. The pilot and mechanic were killed. No patients were on board.
Latson says the wreckage was discovered in three distinct pieces -- the fuselage, the main rotor assembly and the tailboom.
Investigators will seek to interview witnesses and study the craft's structural and electrical components, Latson said on Thursday.
The helicopter took off from Grand Prairie, where the nonprofit air transport EMS service is based.
Trial begins in 1984 stabbing death of SMU student
During opening statements in the trial of a prison inmate charged in the 1984 killing of a Southern Methodist University student, a prosecutor told jurors they will be seeing and hearing graphic evidence.
Dallas County prosecutor Pat Kirlin told jurors Wednesday that 20-year-old Angela Samota was raped then stabbed in the chest 18 times in her off-campus apartment.
Donald Andrew Bess, who is 61, was already serving a life sentence when he was charged two years ago with capital murder in Samota's death. If convicted, he could face the death penalty.
The case went unsolved for more than two decades before authorities said they matched DNA evidence to Bess.
Defense attorney Robbie McClung says the DNA evidence only relates to the rape - not Samota's murder.
Nuclear Security officials discuss contracts
Federal officials say they don't yet have a timeframe for releasing the details on the single management contract for the Pantex nuclear plant near Amarillo and a Tennessee facility.
National Nuclear Security Administration officials were in Amarillo Wednesday to hold a public briefing on contract reform.
According to contract reforms announced earlier this year, the NNSA will conduct a bidding competition for a single contract to manage the Pantex Plant and Tennessee's Y-12 National Security Complex, which produces uranium parts for warheads.
The Amarillo Globe-News reports that there's also a contact option to manage operations at South Carolina's Savannah River Site, which handles tritium, a radioactive gas used in nuclear weapons.