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Feature: German police search co-pilot's home for clues to Germanwings crash mystery

Xinhua, March 27, 2015 Adjust font size:

German police searched on Thursday the Germanwings' co-pilot's home in the town of Montabaur, as well as his apartment in Duesseldorf, trying to find answers to the mystery of Tuesday's Germanwings crash which killed 150 people on board.

According to statements by the French prosecutor in Marseille on Thursday, the co-pilot of the downed Germanwings flight 4U9525 appeared to have deliberately crashed the plane in the French Alps on Tuesday, following a preliminary analysis of the aircraft's black box voice recorder.

The prosecutor in Dusseldorf said in a press release that the searches served especially "the purpose of finding and securing personal documents to obtain evidence of a possible motive".

On Thursday afternoon, along with German police, there were also about 30 reporters surrounding his home, a small house with black tiles and white walls in Montabaur, according to a Xinhua reporter on the scene.

The first group of policemen, accompanied by two investigators, entered the house at around 15:40 local time. About one hour later, another group of investigators also entered the house.

A neighbor named Michaelis confirmed to Xinhua that the house is the co-pilot's home, adding that "this man was nothing special, a very ordinary person."

The co-pilot was "rarely home because of his work in Duesseldorf," said the neighbor. "It was always only a brief meet-and-greet" with him, the neighbor said.

The co-pilot, identified by French prosecutor earlier on Thursday as Andreas Lubitz, who was born in 1987, with his family home at Montabaur, about 100 km northwest of Frankfurt. Endit