Germanwings co-pilot tore up doctor’s note

Investigators said Friday that the co-pilot who deliberately downed a Germanwings flight, killing everyone on board, had torn up a doctor’s note excusing him from work on the day of the crash.

Officials searched the Dusseldorf, Germany, home of co-pilot Andreas Lubitz and removed two boxes and two bags of material, The New York Times reported. They also searched his parents’ home elsewhere.

{mosads}German prosecutors said that they had uncovered that Lubitz had gotten a doctor’s note excusing him from work the day of the crash but that he had torn it up, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Investigators said they had determined that he had concealed the condition related to the note from his employer. Confidentiality laws prevent aviation authorities from specifying the condition or whether it is a physical or mental ailment. Investigators are looking into whether Lubitz has a history of mental illness, including depression, the Times reported.

They said that they had not found a suicide note or anything to suggest he was motivated to crash the plane by religion or politics.

The prime minister of France, where the plane crashed on its way from Barcelona, Spain, to Dusseldorf, called on Lufthansa, Germanwings’ parent company, to release everything it could on the co-pilot.

The investigators looking into the crash are trying to understand why Lubitz locked the plane’s captain out of the cockpit and put the aircraft into a sharp, fatal descent. All 150 on board were killed when the jet collided with the French Alps near Nice.

Lubitz had a longtime love of flight, the Times reported, and had completed some of his training in Phoenix. Officials said on Wednesday that they did not believe that his decision to crash the plane had been an act of terror.