Peter Nielsen murdered

He’s Peter Nielsen. Pretty happy looking dude, eh?

He was only 36 when he was murdered.

He was stabbed in the stomach and heart several times. That too, right in front of his home, with his wife and little children present.

Now, what exactly had happened, you ask?

Nielsen was an air traffic controller for Skyguide in Zurich.

On the fateful night of the 2002 Überlingen mid-air collision accident

[1]

, where two aeroplanes collided into each other mid-air, Nielsen was the only air traffic controller handling the airspace, two workstations at the same time.

It was past midnight, he was stressed out, but most importantly, the radars were being delayed and not working properly.

Because of this, he did not notice how close the two planes (Bashkirian Airlines Flight 2937 and DHL Flight 611) were before it was too late.

Less than a minute before the accident, he realised the danger and contacted Flight 2937, instructing the pilot to descend to avoid a collision.

Nielsen thought he had sorted out the situation. But worse was to come.

The plane collided because Flight 2937’s TCAS, Traffic Collision Avoidance System, gave them the opposite command of what Nielsen had given them.

And that created lots of confusion, causing the planes to fatally crash.

A recreation of what had happened to one of the planes.

All 69 passengers of Flight 2973, most of whom were schoolchildren, were killed.

---

Peter Nielsen was so traumatised by this incident.

He completely blamed himself for the death of all the children.

He had a nervous breakdown shortly afterwards and spent a long time in therapy and on antidepressants and never returned back to work.

---

Two years after this incident, he was murdered.

By a Russian father, Vitaly Kaloyev, who had lost his wife and two little children in the accident.

He was adamant it was Peter Nielsen’s fault.

Grieving Kaloyev spent two years searching for answers and when he thought he had tried every option, he tracked down Nielsen and stabbed him to death in his own back garden.

---

Kaloyev was sentenced to eight years in prison but was released only three years later after appealing that his mental condition wasn’t stable and had not been considered.

'Killing him didn't make me feel any better,' he admitted later.

Whatever it was, no one deserves a heart-breaking ending like Peter Nielsen. A small mistake, which wasn’t even his fault, cost him his life.

Continue reading