Asiana Airlines victim was alive when struck by fire truck, coroner finds

One of the three victims of the Asiana Airlines Flight 214 crash, Chinese student Ye Meng Yuan, survived the impact before being struck and killed by a fire vehicle, a coroner has ruled.

The finding by San Mateo County coroner Robert Foucrault confirmed fears raised soon after the July 6 crash at San Francisco International Airport, when authorities said the 16-year-old girl had been struck, possibly by a fire truck, as first responders rushed to the scene, WVXU reported.

Ye Meng Yuan, Wang Linjia, 16,  classmates from affluent Jiangshan Middle School in Zhejiang, were pronounced dead at the scene of the crash.

Liu Yipeng, 15, also a student at the school, died from injuries six days after the crash.

More than 180 of the 307 passengers and crew who survived the crash were injured when the Asiana Boeing Co. 777 aircraft hit a seawall short of the runway.

USA Today quoted Foucrault as saying of Ye Meng Yuan:

"Internal bleeding ruled out any chance she was dead when she was struck. She was alive at the time when she received the injuries."

In response to the finding, Bloomberg reported, San Francisco Fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White gave a news conference Saturday in which she called Ye Meng Yuan's death was a "tragic accident" that had shaken members of her department.