3rd victim in SF crash: 15-year-old Chinese girl

In this undated photo made available Sunday, July 14, 2013, Liu Yipeng, the third victim in the Asiana Airlines air crash in San Francisco, poses for photos with classmates, unseen in Jiangshan city in eastern China’s Zhejiang province. The third person to die from injuries sustained when an Asiana Airlines jetliner crash landed in San Francisco was identified as Liu Yipeng, a 15-year-old Chinese girl who attended school with the other two victims. (AP Photo) CHINA OUT

SAN FRANCISCO — The third person to die from injuries sustained when an Asiana Airlines jetliner crash landed in San Francisco was identified as a 15-year-old Chinese girl who attended school with the other two victims.

Liu Yipeng’s identity was confirmed by San Mateo County Coroner Robert Foucrault on Saturday. He said that she was rushed to San Francisco General Hospital with head injuries after the July 6 crash and died there Friday morning.

Chinese state media said she attended school with the two 16-year-old girls who also died in the crash.

Liu Yipeng’s identification comes a day after her death was announced amid the official confirmation that one of the other girls who died in the disaster had been covered on the runway in flame-retardant foam and hit by a fire truck speeding to the crash site, a disclosure that raised the tragic possibility she could have survived the crash only to die in its chaotic aftermath.

Police and fire officials confirmed Friday that Ye Meng Yuan was hit by a fire truck racing to extinguish the blazing Boeing 777.

“The fire truck did go over the victim at least one time. Now the other question is, “What was the cause of death?'” San Francisco police spokesman Albie Esparza said. “That’s what we are trying to determine right now.”

All three girls killed were from China.

Ye Meng Yuan’s close friend Wang Linjia was among a group of injured passengers who didn’t get immediate medical help. Rescuers didn’t spot her until 14 minutes after the crash. Wang Linjia’s body was found along with three flight attendants who were flung onto the tarmac.

Moments after the crash, while rescuers tried to help passengers near the burning fuselage, Wang Linjia and some flight attendants lay in the rubble almost 2,000 feet (around 600 meters) away. A group of survivors called emergency services and tried to help them.

Survivors said that after escaping the plane, they sat with at least four victims who appeared to be seriously hurt. They believe one of them was one of the girls who died.

Cindy Stone, who was in that group, was recorded by California Highway Patrol dispatchers calling in for help: “There are no ambulances here. We’ve been on the ground 20 minutes. There are people lying on the tarmac with critical injuries, head injuries. We’re almost losing a woman here. We’re trying to keep her alive.”

San Francisco fire spokeswoman Mindy Talmadge said Friday that when airport personnel reached the group near the seawall, Linjia was dead. She didn’t know when the girl had died.

Several flight attendants remain hospitalized.

Talmadge also confirmed that an Associated Press photograph of a body under a yellow tarp near the burned-out jet was Ye Meng Yuan.

The photo, taken from above, shows firefighters looking down at the tarp, and there are truck track marks leading up to it.

Police said the teenager was covered in foam that rescuers had sprayed on the burning wreckage. When the truck moved while battling the flames, rescuers discovered her body, Esparza said.

“The driver may not have seen the young lady in the blanket of foam,” said Ken Willette of the National Firefighter Protection Agency, which sets national standards for training airfield firefighters. “These could be factors contributing to this tragic event.”

He said fire trucks that responded to the Asiana crash would have started shooting foam while approaching the fuselage from 80 or 100 feet (25-30 meters) away. The foam was sprayed from a cannon on the top of the truck across the ground to clear a safe path for evacuees. That was supposed to create a layer of foam on the ground that is several inches high before the truck gets to the plane.

The victims were close friends and top students, looking forward to spending a few weeks at a Christian summer camp in California, where they planned to practice English and boosting their chances of attending a U.S. college.

Their parents were flown to San Francisco after their deaths where the Chinese Consulate was caring for them.

The crash-landing occurred after the airliner collided with a rocky seawall just short the runway. Dozens of passengers were injured. There were 182 survivors taken to hospitals, though most sustained minor injuries.

So far, an investigation indicates the pilots, a trainee and his instructor failed to realize until too late that the aircraft was dangerously low and flying too slow.

Nothing disclosed so far by the National Transportation Safety Board investigators indicates any problems with the Boeing 777’s engines, computers or automated systems.

Also, San Francisco airport officials said that the runway where the jet crashed was reopened Friday evening, and all airlines would resume normal schedules immediately.