Air Show Toll Hits 68; Swindler Posing as Orphan Sought
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MAINZ, West Germany — The death toll from the crash at the Ramstein air show increased Friday to 68, and police searched for a man posing as an orphan from the disaster in a scheme to bilk the elderly.
Juergen Dietzen, a spokesman for Rhineland-Palatinate state, said a 36-year-old West German man died in a Kaiserslautern hospital of injuries sustained in the Aug. 28 tragedy at the Ramstein air base. He said 61 people remain hospitalized.
Meanwhile, police in Cologne searched for a young man who asked several elderly people for large sums of money after telling them he lost his parents in the air show accident.
An 83-year-old woman in Cologne who heard the man’s story but refused to give him money later saw the man with another elderly woman at a bank, authorities said.
The second woman was about to withdraw several thousand marks from her account to give to the man, police said.
Police said the man fled after the first woman approached him.
They said the man tried the scheme in Cologne, Dortmund and Duesseldorf.
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