Emiliano Sala died when the plane carrying him and pilot David Ibbotson descended in the English Channel
London:
The British Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) said on Thursday it had indicted a man for the death of Argentine footballer Emiliano Sala in a light plane crash last year.
“The UK Civil Aviation Authority has taken legal action against David Henderson for offenses related to the fatal light aircraft crash over the English Channel in January 2019,” said CAA Director Richard Stephenson in a statement posted on the regulator’s website.
“It will be inappropriate for the CAA to say anything more until the deal is done.”
Henderson, 66, appeared in Cardiff Magistrates’ Court on September 28 and was released on bail to appear at Cardiff Crown Court on October 26.
Sala’s mother Mercedes Taffarel welcomed the news but was “disappointed that it has resulted today in what could be a significant further delay in the investigation into Emiliano’s death”, according to his law firm Hickman and Rose.
“His mother remains desperate to know the whole truth about how this could have happened, and urges the CAA to initiate criminal proceedings as quickly as possible, so that an investigation can be carried out to establish this, and that deaths similar are prevented, ”said Daniel Machover of Hickman and Rose.
Sala, 28, died when the plane carrying him and pilot David Ibbotson descended in the English Channel on January 21, just days after joining Cardiff City from Nantes.
He had been Cardiff’s record signing after a £ 15million ($ 19million) fee was agreed with Nantes in the January transfer window.
After traveling to Cardiff to close the deal, Sala returned to France to collect his belongings and say goodbye to his teammates.
It was on his return to the Welsh capital to participate in his first training session that the drama occurred.
The first search operations for the player and the pilot were suspended in the days following the disappearance of the single-engine aircraft Piper Malibu.
However, a crowdfunding effort backed by thousands of donations, including from football stars such as Lionel Messi and Kylian Mbappe, made it possible to launch a private search.
This specialized search recovered Sala’s body from the wreckage in February, but Ibbotson’s body has not been found.
Two months after the discovery of Sala’s body, his father Horacio Sala died of a heart attack in Argentina.
In March, UK air crash investigators concluded that Ibbotson was not cleared to fly the plane or at night, and had lost control and was flying too fast trying to avoid bad weather.
The Air Accident Investigation Branch said the pilot and Sala were affected by carbon monoxide poisoning prior to the crash.
(Except for the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is posted from a syndicated feed.)
