good evening, everyone. thanks for joining us here in the newsroom. i m don lemon. we begin with new information about a deadly crash at a nevada air show. crowds have been going to reno, nevada for decades to watch incredible acts of courage in the skies. the national championship air races draw up to 200,000 people every single year. planes have crashed and pilots have died in the past. but until now, nos spectators have been killed. here s what happened. one witness called the sound of the impact unbelievable and you can certainly see why. veteran pilot and hollywood stuntman jimmy leeward was killed. eight people in the crowd also died. photographs taken right before the crash show a piece of the plane appears to be missing. a piece that would have had a major impact on the pilot s ability to maintain control. cnn s dan simon is in reno, nevada tonight and he has more on the pilot and the investigation into the crash. he was an aviation all-star, at least here in re
the newsroom. i m don lemon. we begin with new information about a deadly crash at a nevada air show. crowds have been going to reno, nevada for decades to watch incredible acts of courage in the skies. the national championship air races draw up to 200,000 people every single year. planes have crashed and pilots have died in the past. but until now, nos spectators have been killed. here s what happened. one witness called the sound of the impact unbelievable and you can certainly see why. veteran pilot and hollywood stuntman jimmy leeward was killed. eight people in the crowd also died. photographs taken right before the crash show a piece of the plane appears to be missing. a piece that would have had a major impact on the pilot s ability to maintain control. cnn s dan simon is in reno, nevada tonight and he has more on the pilot and the investigation into the crash. he was an aviation all-star, at least here in reno where jimmy leeward had been competing in races since
collect. from the cnn center in atlanta, georgia, this is your cnn sunday morning. thank you for being with us. as always, we like to say good morning to all of our forces watching us on the american forces network. thank you for all you do. let s start with a picture from the air race crash in nevada. could give investigators information about exactly what happened. see this? this is something, it appears, breaking off the tail of that plane that crashed. this was just after the plane veered out of control and crashed into the crowd. federal investigators are checking this out. a component has been recovered in the area where that was observed, but i think it s critical that we have not identified the component. it s been examined. so we don t know what the component is or even if it came from this particular aircraft. we are clearly going to focus on that, and that s part of the informational gathering that s going on right now. nine people died in that crash. seven
try to pinpoint the cause of that deadly plane crash at an air race. t.j. has been telling you about it all morning long. the terrifying moment was witnessed by thousands of spectators. horrifying moment, it happened in an instant. at least three people and dozens more hurt when the plane slammed into the crowd. cnn s dan simmon in reno. dan, what more have we learned about how this happened? reporter: not much at this point, fred. i should point out that we ve already seen several videos like the one you just showed. we just learned there were actually 300 professionally credentialed photographers on site. so chances are we may be seeing a lot more video, a lot more pictures in terms of what happened right before the plane went down. what we know, according to the i witnesses. the plane pitched up and rolled and went down to the ground in a matter of seconds. we know that the pilot, said to be very experienced, 74 years old. been coming to the air show since 1975. so exper
these are all organizations opposed to the death penalty. but what this case different from others in the past as we approach the 11th hour there are hundreds of thousands of people. you saw their signatures on those petitions that were delivered. these are people, a lot of these people may not typically be against the death penalty. these are people who are looking at the case thinking that there are doubts here and that an execution needs to be stopped. there s a lot of people pushing to have his sentence commuted and not have him set free. you don t see a lot of people coming right out and saying this man is innocent. speaking of those who do think he should be set free or at least the case looked at, some names might surprise you. the former fbi director william sessions who wrote an op-ed in the newspaper in atlanta yesterday saying, the evidence in this case consisting almost entirely of conflicting stories, testimonies an statements is inadequate to the task of co