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Missing plane: Bodies found
26/12/2007 14:29 - (SA)
Panama City - The bodies of a California businessman, his teenage daughter and the Panamanian pilot of a plane that crashed at the weekend were found on Tuesday in Panama's mountains, officials said.
A 12-year-old American girl survived but she suffered multiple traumas and hypothermia, and cold, wet weather prevented authorities from evacuating her immediately from the crash site on the slope of a remote volcano.
Michael Klein, 37, Talia Klein, 13, and pilot Edwin Lasso, 23, were found dead in an uninhabited region known as Las Ovejas, 430km west of the capital, Panama's civil protection agency said.
The wreckage was located at a hard-to-reach site on the Baru volcano, at an altitude of about 1 070m, the civil aviation authority said in a separate statement.
Rescuers were giving medical attention to Francesca Lewis - a friend of Talia's who was travelling with the Kleins - in a makeshift shelter, said prosecutor Jose Henriquez, who is handling the investigation.
"They're warming her and we hope to be able to get her out sometime tonight to a hospital," Henriquez said by telephone from Boquete in Chiriqui state, adding that he did not have enough information to say whether her life was in danger.
Officials had said earlier that Lewis had already been taken to a hospital in David, the capital of Chiriqui.
Difficult search
Aviation authorities said the cause of the crash was not yet known, but RPC radio reported that witnesses saw the plane flying at a very low altitude around noon on Sunday amid buffeting winds.
Klein, a 37-year-old hedge fund manager, was on vacation with the two girls at an eco-resort he owns in the Central American nation, according to Kim Klein, his ex-wife and Talia's mother. The three had been scheduled to return to Santa Barbara, California, on Monday, she said from Boquete, Panama, earlier on Tuesday.
But their plane disappeared after departing on Sunday morning from Islas Secas off Panama's Pacific coast, heading for the Chiriqui volcano, about 460km west of the capital.
Rescue workers and volunteers combed a mountainous area of Panama's western Chiriqui province on Monday and Tuesday, but dense tropical foliage, mountainous terrain and heavy rains made air and land searches extremely difficult, said Roberto Rolando Rodriguez, a spokesperson for nation's air security agency.
Kim Klein travelled to Panama on Monday morning and spoke with authorities about the possible whereabouts of the aircraft. She had offered $25 000 to anyone who could locate it.
Michael Klein, the chief executive officer of Pacificor LLC, a Santa Barbara-based company that manages several hedge funds, founded two companies in the 1990s before becoming president and CEO of eGroups Inc, which was the world's largest group e-mail communication service.
'An unbelievable individual'
Yahoo Inc purchased eGroups for $450m in August 2000 and it is now known as Yahoo Groups.
A Klein colleague described him as a brilliant businessman who skipped high school and graduated from college at age 17.
"One of the most interesting people you could ever speak to," Kurt Benjamin, the vice-president of business development at Pacificor, told KNBC-TV in Los Angeles. "He's just an unbelievable individual."
Benjamin said Klein was close to his daughter.
"Her father was so proud of her," he said. "She was an amazing, accomplished horseback rider - just an absolute winner."
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