American military becomes lead agency in Tiwi Islands Osprey crash investigation
Territory agencies have been ousted from the investigation into a fatal military aircraft crash over the Tiwi Islands.
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The American military has taken over an investigation into the death of three Marines during a training exercise on a remote island off the Northern Territory.
NT Police were leading the response after a horror military aircraft crash on the Tiwi Islands on Sunday August 27.
Captain Eleanor LeBeau, Major Tobin Lewis and Corporal Spencer Collart were killed after a MV-22 Osprey went down near Pickataramoor on the first day of Exercise Predators Run.
There were 23 troops on board the tilt-rotor military aircraft when it went down, with the two pilots and crew chief understood to have sacrificed their lives to avert a catastrophic crash killing all on-board.
In the immediate wake of the crash, Police Commissioner Michael Murphy said his investigators were deployed for a 10-day “prolonged and complex” operation.
The NT police were sent to examine and collect evidence from the site as the lead agency, working in a partnership with the two defence forces.
However, on Friday Mr Murphy confirmed NT Police were no longer the lead agency, with the Australian Defence Force to assist the American-led investigation.
“The jurisdiction has been transferred to the US Marine Corps,” Mr Murphy said.
“So Northern Territory police will no longer have any involvement in the investigation and that’s a matter for the defence assets.”
Mr Murphy was unable to confirm any of the initial findings from the crash, saying any public release of the causes of the crash was a “matter for the United States government”.
“There are specialist investigators that are with the defence force, and that’s going to take a bit of time to reconstruct and put that together,” he said.
Under the Commonwealth Defence Visiting Forces Act, the Territory coroner was barred from holding an inquest into the three marines’ deaths with the initial reports passed onto the American authorities.
The federal Attorney-General’s office said Mark Dreyfus issued a determination allowing the United States Armed Forces to remove the bodies of their military personnel who died in the accident on Wednesday August 30.
An Australian Defence Force spokesman redirected all questions to the Marine Rotational Force Darwin.
The Marines were also contacted for comment, but did not respond by deadline.
The US Military has confirmed it will continue to fly Osprey aircraft, despite the fresh safety concerns.
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