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Woman who fell out of plane identified

December 15, 2000
Web posted at: 11:49 p.m. EST (0449 GMT)

SACRAMENTO, California (CNN) -- The body of a woman believed to have fallen out of a plane in flight has been found, Sacramento police said.

The Sacramento County Coroner's office told CNN the woman is Elisabeth Mathilde Otto, 31, a native of the Netherlands. A spokeswoman for the coroner's office said Otto had lived in Germany for the past six years and had only been in the U.S. for about six weeks, where she lived in San Francisco.

The plane was about 2,000 feet up Thursday night when she reportedly fell out of the rear door.

Police said a resident three miles from the Sacramento Executive Airport found the body of the blond, dark-coated woman in a nearby field Friday afternoon.

Lydia Gonzales, who called police to tell them about the body her neighbors found in a field near her house, was shocked to hear that the woman had fallen from a plane.

"She fell from an airplane? Oh my God," Gonzales sobbed. "I thought she had been shot in the head." Gonzales said the woman's body was twisted on the ground, and she had severe damage to her head.

"I hope I never see anything like that again in my life," she said.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has ruled out foul play, saying Otto either committed suicide or was the victim of a bizarre accident.

The Federal Aviation Administration, meanwhile, ruled out the possibility that a mechanical malfunction caused the door to open, FAA spokesman Jerry Snyder said.

[snip] (The rest is essentially a recap of what we'd already heard, inluding possible explanations for the time delay in notifying anyone about what had happened.)