Looters Stole Cash, Credit Cards, and Jewelry from Flight MH17 Crash Victims

[n2doc]

The crash site of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, which went down yesterday afternoon after being shot with a missile, is now being looted. This is not only causing issues for the investigation, but also for the families of the victims on board, who will now not be able to recover the lost property of the 298 dead passengers and crew.

After the crash, investigators were unable to get to the site quickly and rope it off to preserve evidence. This allowed armed separatists and locals to essentially raid the scene. Suitcases were removed from the wreckage and pillaged. The coldhearted looters stole a variety of personal possessions, but left behind some apparent undesirables: a Minnie Mouse lunchbox, a Winnie the Pooh stuffed animal, family photographs, and intact passports.

As for what they took, wallets and credit cards were a favorite. A photojournalist at the scene said, "There isn't a single cellphone, wallet with money or camera to be found in any handbag or on the bodies. It's like they all mysteriously disappeared overnight."

Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine's interior minister (who was also one of the first to blame pro-Russian separatists for the crash) reported that jewelry and credit cards were among the items being pilfered. A post on his Facebook page reads in English, "I have just now received information That Terrorists - Death-hunters collecting Were not Only Cash money and Jewelry of the crashed Boing [sic] passengers died but Also the credit cards of the Victims. Currently They might as well TRY to use Them in Ukraine or Pass Them on to Russia. My humble Request to the Relatives of the Victims to Freeze Their credit cards, so That They will not loose Their assets to Terrorists!"


more
http://www.thewire.com/global/2014/07/flight-mh17-crash-site-has-been-heavily-looted/374707/

Human Vermin

[TwilightGardener]

1. These separatists, I'm betting, have by now lost whatever sympathies anyone else

in the world might have had for them. Human vermin is right.

[Codeine]

4. They still have water-carriers and useful idiots sticking up for them.

Some right here at DU, sadly.

[Coventina]

12. And they are in overdrive today.

[Cali_Democrat]

2. The area is controlled by Putin's pro-Russia separatists...

They allowed folks to pillage the crash site. It also helps to impede the investigation so that the full facts will never be known.

Putin is 3 steps ahead of everybody else...

[grasswire]

3. of course this happened

....it would probably happen in any poor area of the world. Unfortunate, but predictable.

[TwilightGardener]

5. Actually, in most areas of the world, REAL investigators and police

and military immediately control the site as soon as possible. This is Putin's Clown Show in charge, shooting at outside help and tampering with the evidence. And looting.

[HooptieWagon]

7. No. Unfortunately looting is common at a disaster site.

Even in the US. And the region has been under a state of seige for several months, and is likely a desparate population. Looting was predictable.

[TwilightGardener]

10. I'm not saying looting isn't common, even here. We see it all the time.

I'm saying there are attempts to control it by actual authorities. This is a crime scene, being daily (and probably purposefully) degraded by locals and "forces" in masks with guns. I expect Putin will declare that the truth will never be known because the investigation was not reliable, and then blame Ukraine, or deny Russia gave them such weapons.

[HooptieWagon]

11. What authorities?

Its a region of anarchy. Ukraine government is trying to re-establish authority. Putin doesn't have direct control over rebels. Rebel commanders have tenuous control over fairly undisciplined troops. The fighting is to establish authority where there is none.

[TwilightGardener]

13. Erm....that was my point. They're shooting at international investigators arriving at the

scene. No one who knows what the fuck they are doing and may be impartial and accountable is being allowed access, currently. This is not a normal situation.

[Jenoch]

38. I once lived in a metro area with a population of 280,000.

Just a few weeks after the LA riots after the Rodney King verdicts, there was a train derailment just outside of the city where I lived. Tanker cars were damaged and a cloud of toxic fumes were released and the prevailing winds were pushing that cloud of fumes towards downtown and the neighborhoods. The entire area was evacuated. The cloud of noxious gas dissapated on its own and disaster was averted.

I worked for a radio station with downtown studios (I did not evacuate.) The main street was deserted. You could have fired a cannon down the street and not hit anything. There was zero looting. Everything was orderly. People helped the elderly and the infirm to evacuate and to return to their homes. Of course this happened in the midwest and not on either of the coasts, or, for that matter, on the Gulf coast. Looting is not inevitable at disaster sites everywhere in the U.S.

[Baclava]

14. horseshit, the doomed plane had the bad luck to fall in a field ruled by drunken assholes with guns

so you think all poor people are uncivilized - how colonial of you

[Coventina]

15. As a person who has known extreme poverty, I find this insulting.

I spent a good part of my childhood homeless.

And I would NEVER have contemplated stealing from the dead.

NEVER.

[Sherman A1]

16. ....

[malaise]

21. Connecticut trooper pleads guilty to stealing dying motorcycle crash victim’s jewelry, money

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/connecticut-trooper-pleads-guilty-stealing-dying-motorcycle-crash-victim-jewelry-money-article-1.1870311
<snip>
State trooper AJ Huntsman was accused of lifting more than $8,000 in cash and jewelry from a dying man at a motorcycle crash site in 2012. He later lied to supervisors and the dead man's family about it, authorities said.

His dash cam did him in.

A crooked Connecticut cop caught by his dash cam stealing more than $8,000 in cash and jewelry off a mangled motorcycle crash victim is facing prison after pleading guilty Wednesday.

State trooper AJ Huntsman, 45, was facing 10 years for the theft, but was likely to get just 16 months in jail and five years' probation when he's sentenced on Oct. 3, the Connecticut Post reported.

Prosecutors said Huntsman lifted $3,700 in cash and a $5,000 gold chain from crash victim John Scalesse and later lied to supervisors and the dead man's family about having the loot.

Huntsman rejected two plea bargains before agreeing to plead guilty to third-degree larceny and tampering with evidence.

Huntsman, a 19-year vet, was the first cop on the scene.
------------------------
I'm trying to figure out what is going on here. People steal at any and every opportunity.
Some people are scumbags including some cops.
This was posted on DU a few days ago.

[Louisiana1976]

31. 16 months with 5 years probation is too light a sentence.

[malaise]

32. Unbelievable

An officer of the law stealing from the dead.
The mother of one of my classmates died suddenly one morning. By the time she reached their home in what was considered a decent neighborhood in Montego Bay, she saw one of the neighbors heading out her front door with a television set. The police hadn't arrived yet and neither had the coroner was on his way. Human beings often disgust me.

[LiberalEsto]

6. Fucking animals

Russia is not a civilized nation.

[HooptieWagon]

8. Crash site wasn't in Russia. nt

[Gravitycollapse]

17. I guess it is okay to be a bigot on DU since a jury let your disgusting post stand.

I've reported this to the admin. But I doubt anything will be done.

Just know that your bigotry is not welcome, even if a few ignorant individuals let you off the hook.

[LiberalEsto]

18. FYI I am 1/4 Russian nt

[Gravitycollapse]

19. I don't give a single shit.

[conservaphobe]

23. If you had said the exact same thing about America, it would have never even been alerted on.

Keep speaking truth to power.

[Gravitycollapse]

24. In other words, keep being a bigot on a progressive board. You're a real inspiration.

[The Magistrate]

41. When You Say 'Speaks Truth To Power', Sir, God Kills a Kitten --- A Cute, Cuddly Little Kitten

Please don't make God kill another little kitten, not ever again....

[Gravitycollapse]

43. ...

[Skittles]

37. I am half English

think it would be OK for me to make a sweeping generalization putting down England?

[LiberalEsto]

20. Congratulations, you have just made my (very small) Ignore list

[Gravitycollapse]

22. I couldn't care less if you had a gun to my head.

[840high]

51. Wrong country?

[fujiyama]

9. This is just sick

Russia seems perfectly content with further isolating itself.

Fuck you Putin. You half-wit, insecure thug.

[roamer65]

25. Unfortunately, this is a worldwide constant.

Sad, but true.

The human race has a long way to go.

[Coventina]

28. Not hardly. Most cultures have strict taboos about stealing from the dead.

Those who violate those norms are considered as lawbreakers and degenerates in society.

As I posted upthread, I have lived in extreme poverty and would have NEVER contemplated desecrating those dead in that way.

Poor does not equal evil or criminal.

[smirkymonkey]

46. Thank you!

This is unacceptable and absolutely disgusting. There is no excuse for it.

[NaturalHigh]

26. Bottom feeders.

[daleo]

27. This isn't new, as a quick google search of plane crash looting demonstrates

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/centralamericaandthecaribbean/guatemala/10149715/Plane-crashes-in-Guatemala-mountains-killing-six-and-sparking-looting.html

A small plane has crashed in an isolated mountain area of western Guatemala, killing six men and causing scores of villagers to swarm the site and carry off bags of cash, according to a firefighters' spokesman.


http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lauda_Air_Flight_004

Voluntary rescue teams and local villagers looted the remains of the flight, so relatives were unable to recover personal possessions. The bodies were taken to a hospital in Bangkok. The storage was not refrigerated and the bodies were decomposing. Dental and forensic experts worked to identify bodies. Twenty-seven bodies were never identified.[11]

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/latest-news/looting-after-plane-crashes-in-nigeria-killing-153/story-fn3dxity-1226382327480?nk=e6c8e6b5bac494e99de20a02e7dab889

Some, according to one 50-year-old resident, sought to gain financially from the disaster.

"The looting started right away," Tunji Malomo said. He locked up his nearby bar as soon as he heard news of the crash.

[geek tragedy]

34. It 's a new one for a group of people to shoot a

passenger jet down and then rob the bodies of their victims .

[Gravitycollapse]

39. You make it sound like they shot the airplane out of the sky just to loot the bodies.

They probably didn't even intend to shoot a passenger jet. They thought it was a military aircraft.

Thus, the looting is either an attempt to cover up their mistake or the consequence of local, irrelevant activity. Either way, this is not some earth shattering news.

[geek tragedy]

40. I'm pretty sure that they didn't know it was a passenger jet.

However, their looting the bodies of the victims of their own crime, almost literally eating what they killed, indicates an almost feral lack of remorse.

[Gravitycollapse]

42. What is more socially and politically human than destroying evidence of your crime?

What other species does such a thing?

I don't agree with the idea of dehumanizing those who do terrible things. Especially when those terrible things were done in the name of a political cause. What is more deeply societal and human than shooting a missile at a bunch of innocent people because you thought they were the enemy and then looting their corpses to try and mask, even desperately and pointlessly, the nature of your crime?

My God, this kind of stuff, the murder and coverup attempts, must happen so regularly all over the world it's almost its own economy.

There's nothing feral about it. We are approaching the deepest reaches of human ideology.

These aren't wild recluses. They're organisms of the state, whichever state that might be. This is war in all its synthetic, technological terror.

[geek tragedy]

44. Watches and jewelry are not evidence they are

booty. A diamond ring's value is cash, not determining what kind of missile hit the plane.

Looting corpses is generally regarded as so foul it's generally considered akin to the behavior of carrion birds. Except those birds play a productive role in the ecosystem.

[Gravitycollapse]

45. You loot the crash site for evidence and take whatever value from the bodies...

Looting the dead for capital is so historically mored that it's ubiquitous throughout history. Add to that looting for the purpose of the coverup?

This is the uncut reality of human warfare. There's nothing out of the ordinary. That the dead happened to be total, blameless victims, is incidental; dead innocents is a routine affair in war.

I just want to be clear. What happened is brutal and stomach churning. But it's those things in a deeply human form.

[Amonester]

47. >an attempt to cover up their mistake<

Yep.

What else could we expect? Like fessing up on the fact that they made a big mistake, then apologizing to every families of their alien victims for doing it, saying like "We are sorry for what happened. We didn't mean to do it. It was a MISTAKE we wish we would have never DONE. We will do everything we can to collaborate in everything that needs to be done to help you grieve your lost ones in all due respect." (And everything else dignified HUMANS say and do in such tragedies.)

But, no. Even animals don't conduct themselves the way these monsters do.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

29. Earlier today a poster was (rather angrily, it seemed) dismissing this

as irresponsible tweeting, with no proof it happened.

Guess he got his proof, probably didn't delete his post.

[bluestateguy]

30. Looters of a plane crash should be shot on site

No excuses.

[geek tragedy]

33. Like hyenas, they feast upon those whom they have slain.

Monsters. Hope the Ukrainians take care of them right quick.

[Amonester]

48. In their case, I would apologize to all hyenas for the comparison... n/T

[geek tragedy]

49. True. Carrion birds come to mind, but they

rarely kill anything
.

[Amonester]

50. Yep. See my reply #47 above...

I saw yours after posting.

[GusBob]

35. drunks

[Historic NY]

36. Fuckers, its going to make identifications harder.....

they need to be shot on sight.