Five University City (UC) residents, including retired military personnel, have formed a civilian committee in an effort to oversee the Dec. 8 F\/A 18 jet crash investigation, which demolished two UC homes, killing a family of four. “We [formed this committee] ourselves,” said Rick Ramirez, UC resident and retired naval commander. Ramirez retired in 2000 after serving 22 years in the Navy; he said newly elected District 1 City Councilwoman Sherri Lightner did not form the five-person UC Jet Crash Committee. “Sherri Lightner did not want to be involved. She did not want to find out more about the accident,” Ramirez said. “I feel like people are letting the case move slowly.” Lightner\u2019s office said the councilwoman would work with the group. “If there is interest in a community group, it should be led by the community,” said Erin Demorest, Lightner\u2019s council representative. “And we\u2019ll be happy to work with them to get them the information they need.” Ramirez said he served as a naval flight officer and worked as a flight instructor at North Island training command. “It\u2019s kind of fortuitous that I can assist the community,” Ramirez said. “My argument is that [the pilot] should have landed at North Island at runway 36, not over any houses at all \u2026 This is not a commentary on whether the military should stay or go. It\u2019s to keep this from happening again.” Besides Ramirez, the five-person committee includes residents Ron Belanger, Bob Stein, Stephanie Jed and Pia Sud. “I\u2019m in support of both the military and the community \u2026 So I can see both ways,” Ramirez said. “They\u2019re still investigating, and I know these things take time. We\u2019d like to have access to the investigation report when it\u2019s ready.” Ramirez and other committee members said they would like to peruse the military\u2019s full report, stemming from the Aircraft Mishap Board (AMB), but the group is not as concerned with the JAG (Judge Advocate General) report, he said. “The AMB is [in San Diego] because the squadron that owns the airplane is here,” Ramirez said, adding that the AMB took over investigating the crash almost immediately. “But there\u2019s a lot we don\u2019t know because we don\u2019t have the MIR [Mishap Investigative Report].” Ramirez and the committee said their concerns include reasons why the pilot continued to fly over populated areas on one engine. “The aircraft crashed in UC but it flew over La Jolla \u2014 he could have gone down anytime, really,” Ramirez said. “The fact that an aircraft can fly on one engine is beside the point.” Ramirez said group members plan to wait until the military\u2019s investigation is more complete before asking to see the MIR. “If it doesn\u2019t jeopardize national security, then there\u2019s no reason they shouldn\u2019t let the report out,” Ramirez said. “This is the Marine Corps\u2019 opportunity for those people that are not in favor of having them here to step up and be good neighbors. We\u2019ll see if they do that or not.” For more information about the UC Jet Crash Committee, e-mail 92122jetcrash@gmail.com.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Five University City (UC) residents, including retired military personnel, have formed a civilian committee in an effort to oversee the Dec. 8 F\/A 18 jet crash investigation, which demolished two UC homes, killing a family of four. “We [formed this committee] ourselves,” said Rick Ramirez, UC resident and retired naval commander. Ramirez retired in 2000 […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":281155,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11560","_seopress_titles_title":"UC residents form committee to investigate jet crash","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11560,11551],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-281154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-la-jolla-village-news","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=281154"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281154\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/281155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}