EAST HARTFORD -- Police released their incident report and 911 calls Tuesday on the fatal plane crash in October 2016, detailing a fight in the cockpit moments before the crash.
Federal authorities believe the plane crash that happened October 11, 2016 in East Hartford, was an attempted suicide, not an act of terrorism.. The NTSB announced their initial investigation into the crash “indicates the crash is the result of an intentional act.”
That information, according the East Hartford police reports, came from Arian Prevalla, the flight instructor who was in the plane at the time of the crash but survived. He is the one who told investigators that Feras Freitekh, the student pilot, started an argument with him, leading to the crash. Freitekh died, but Prevalla was able to get himself out of the plane after it crashed and was taken to the hospital with serious burns.
Interviewed from a hospital bed, Prevalla told police his student, Freitekh, did everything wrong that day. His maneuvers were backward, he was joking and laughing, and blurting out things that didn't make sense, muttering about not wanting to fly any more. And that his mother wanted him to fly.
Prevalla said he ordered his student to give up control of the plane, but Freitekh refused. He even tried to wrestle the controls away, to no avail. Finally, instead of returning to Brainard airport, the plane flipped over, and crashed.
Witnesses in East Hartford police reports said they saw the plane flying west toward Hartford at a low altitude, then it abruptly turned, it hit power lines and crashed on Main Street. The crash happened directly in front of a minivan carrying four people. The people in the van were not injured. Several of the reports state the survivor of the crash jumped from the plane, while others state that he got out after the crash happened.
The NTSB handed the investigation over to the FBI after determining that the crash was intentional.