Miami Jet Crash Probe Looks at Cargo Shift

Forty-five tons of textiles may have shifted as a cargo plane struggled to take off from Miami International Airport, and the engines then apparently stalled, sending the plane plummeting tail first into a busy street, investigators said Friday.

The doomed DC-8’s roll down the runway was longer than normal, and when it finally became airborne, its nose was at an 85-degree angle before crashing back to earth, investigators said.

Officials with the National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration said they were looking at whether the 29-year-old plane may have been overloaded with cargo and extra fuel, and whether the cargo shifted during takeoff.

Earlier Friday, a body was found in a car whose charred shell was mangled in with the wreckage of the plane--the first known victim to be killed on the ground.

A badly burned body found late Friday was believed to be the fourth person on board the plane, an employee of the company shipping the cargo, the Miami Herald report in today’s editions. Investigators believed that three bodies recovered Thursday were the crew members of the Fine Air Services Inc. flight.

But they warned that none of the four bodies found so far had yet been identified because they were so badly burned.

“You got to remember that all these bodies are in bad condition, so it’s going to take some time to identify these people,” said Juan Del Castillo of the Metro-Dade police.

It was not immediately known if the person found in the car was one of two people who were believed to have been in the vicinity of the fiery crash and were reported missing after not returning home Thursday night.

Liliana Alvarez said her younger brother, 34-year-old Renato Alvarez, disappeared Thursday while taking lunch to his wife at a business near the crash site. She said the father of a small boy would never disappear without calling his family.

“He’s a very loving and caring husband and he wouldn’t do that,” she said. “We think he might have perished in the crash.”

Federal officials say a cargo manifest showed the plane was carrying almost 45 tons of fabric for Levi’s dress slacks, five tons more than the airline said. It was bound for the Dominican Republic.