Brazilian authorities have recovered the bodies of all 62 plane crash victims By Reuters
Written by Sebastian Rocandio
VINHEDO, Brazil (Reuters) – Brazilian emergency services on Saturday recovered the remains of 62 victims from a plane that crashed in the city of Vinhedo, near Sao Paulo yesterday, killing all on board.
Most of the bodies of the victims – 34 men and 28 women – have been transferred to the Sao Paulo police morgue for identification. The bodies of the pilot and his partner were identified earlier in the day, said Dario Pacheco, the mayor of Vinhedo.
Four people with dual citizenship were among the victims, three Venezuelans and one woman from Portugal, said Voepass Airlines, which was piloting the plane.
The Venezuelans were a 4-year-old boy, his mother and grandmother, reported the local newspaper Globo News. The boy's dog was also on the plane, the family was taking it later to Colombia, according to the store.
On Friday, Voepass said the plane was carrying 57 passengers and four crew members, but on Saturday the company confirmed that another unidentified passenger was on board, putting the death toll at 62.
Authorities are using seats, physical features, documents and equipment such as cell phones to identify the victims, said firefighter Maycon Cristo at the scene of the accident early Saturday as bodies were removed from the crash.
Relatives of the victims have been brought to Sao Paulo to provide DNA samples to help identify the remains, said government defense coordinator Henguel Pereira.
The plane's so-called “black box” containing recorded voices and flight data is still being analyzed, said Marcelo Moreno, head of Brazil's air accident investigation agency Cenipa, at a press conference in Vinhedo.
The plane, an ATR-72 turboprop, was en route to Sao Paulo from Cascavel, Parana state, and crashed around 1:30 pm (1630 GMT) in Vinhedo, about 80 kilometers (50 miles) northwest of Sao Paulo. Despite landing on the landing, no one was injured on the ground.
The plane was flying normally until 1:21 p.m., when it stopped responding to calls, and lost radar at 1:22 p.m., the Brazilian Air Force said in a statement.
The pilots did not report an emergency or bad weather, the air force said.
Franco-Italian ATR, jointly owned by Airbus and Leonardo, is a leading manufacturer of regional turboprop aircraft with seating for 40 to 70 people. ATR told Reuters on Friday that its experts were “fully engaged” in the investigation into the accident.
