A South African teenager vacationing in Mozambique may have found part of a wing from missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which his family dismissed as "rubbish" and his mother nearly threw away, he said Friday.
On Dec. 30,
Liam Lotter was strolling on a beach in southern Mozambique, near the
resort town of Xai Xai, when he spotted a gray piece of debris washed up
on the sand, he recalled. It had rivet holes along the edge and the
number 676EB stamped on it, convincing him he had found a piece of an
aircraft. So he dragged the piece back to his family's vacation home.
"It
was so waterlogged at that time, it was quite heavy. I struggled to
pick it up," he told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. The
curved piece of debris is about 3.3 feet (one meter) long, and about
half that length wide, his father Casper Lotter said.
His
parents dismissed it as a "piece of rubbish" that was probably debris
from a boat, with his uncle making fun of him for dragging it around,
but the 18-year-old insisted on bringing it back to South Africa to
research the fragment.
Back home in Wartburg in
KwaZulu-Natal province, the piece was stored with the family's angling
gear and almost forgotten as Lotter focused on his final year in high
school. His mother even tried to throw it out, he said.
The Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 jet vanished with 239 people on board while flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014.
It
was only when Lotter read about another piece of possible debris from
the missing airliner also found in Mozambique, about 186 miles (300
kilometers) from where he had made his discovery, that he resumed his
probe.
"I was very shocked —
Mozambique, similar color, similar area," the teen said of the piece
discovered by an American man. "He described it similarly to what I'm
looking at right now."
Last
week, Lotter's mother Candace contacted Australian aviation authorities
and they said the number on the part indicates it may belong to a Boeing
777, according to Casper Lotter. Australian authorities contacted South
African counterparts to have the part examined by experts.
The honeycomb structure indicates it is either the leading edge of a wing, or a horizontal stabilizer.
"We
have arranged for collection of the part, which will be sent to
Australia as they are the ones appointed by Malaysia to identify parts
found," Kabelo Ledwaba, spokesman South African Civil Aviation
Authority, wrote in a text message to the AP.
The
Australian Transport Safety Bureau, the agency heading the deep sea
search for the missing airliner, was coordinating with the South African
and Malaysian governments to bring the piece to the Australian capital
Canberra for expert examination, ATSB spokesman Dan O'Malley said on
Saturday.
The ATSB had spoken
to the Lotter family and had seen photographs of the piece, but would
not comment on the likelihood of it being part of a Boeing 777, O'Malley
said.
The piece will be examined in Canberra by experts from Australia, Malaysia and Boeing, he said.
The same experts will also
examine debris on its way to Canberra that was also found in Mozambique
last month by Blaine Gibson, a Seattle lawyer and part-time adventurer.
Gibson
found what could be a piece of tail section from the missing aircraft.
The piece Gibson found had "NO STEP" written on it.The 58-year-old's search for the missing jet has taken him to beaches in the Maldives, Mauritius, Cambodia, Myanmar and the French island of Reunion, he told The Associated Press. Gibson also travelled to Malaysia to attend a commemorative ceremony held on Sunday by the families of passengers on board the airliner.
The South African teenager hopes his find will help the grieving families, and inspire others who may have found fragments of the missing plane to hand them over to authorities.
Credit: Associated Press(AP), JOHANNESBURG
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