PSYCHO KILLER
Docs said unbalanced pilot was ‘unfit’ to work He tore up note, got into cockpit on same day
THE UNBALANCED aviator behind the mid-air mass murder in the French Alps should never have been in the cockpit.
Andreas Lubitz, 27, was despondent over a recent split from his former fiancée — and shredded a doctor’s note declaring him “unfit to work” Tuesday, the day he killed 149 people by slamming his plane into a mountain.
The sick note for the unstable Lubitz never reached his bosses at Germanwings, with the pilot instead tearing the missive into pieces at his apartment before heading to work, authorities said Friday.
He was at the controls of Flight 9525, locked alone inside the deathly-silent cockpit, when the plane went down.
The note pulled from an apartment trash can after Tuesday’s horrific crash said Lubitz “was declared by a medical doctor unfit to work,” according to German prosecutor Chrisoph Krumpa.
Investigators also said other torn-up documents in the apartment led them to believe Lubitz went out of his way to hide his affliction from his friends and employer.
But German media reports indicated Lubitz had previously battled depression, and his Lufthansa bosses would have been aware of his struggles.
In 2009, Lubitz reportedly underwent psychiatric treatment for a “serious depressive episode” — around the same time he took six months off from flight training.
There was no suicide note and no confession among the boxes of papers seized from the co-pilot’s apartment after investigators spent 90 minutes inside.
“Nor was there any evidence of a political or religious background to what happened,” said prosecutors, suggesting that something in Lubitz had simply snapped.
As a fuller picture of the suicidal pilot emerged, the German newspaper Bild reported that Lubitz — who had a history of depression — was in a fragile emotional state over his romantic woes.
Lubitz had a “serious relationship crisis with his girlfriend,” and was reportedly engaged at one point to the mystery woman, Bild said.
Lubitz also had a history of health issues that he hid from his employers and colleagues, German prosecutor Ralf Herrenbrueck said Friday after removing documents from Lubitz's Dusseldorf apartment.
In addition to the ripped-up doctor's note to excuse Lubitz from work Tuesday, investigators found other medical documents indicating “an existing illness and appropriate medical treatment,” prosecutors said.
The news was grim Friday from the remote stretch where Flight 9525 crashed at an altitude of about 6,000 feet after a slow descent toward doom.
Workers at the site recovered between 400 and 600 body parts scattered across the debris field of about two football fields, without a single victim discovered intact. Authorities said the Airbus A320 was pulverized on impact during a routine Barcelona-to-Dusseldorf flight gone horribly awry. Sixteen high school students and two infants were among the dead. The co-pilot's friends and neighbors said they were shocked by investigators’ allegations. They claimed Lubitz was a quiet, normal guy who loved to fly.