MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Friday marks 30 years since two West Virginians lost their lives in the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing, Dec. 21, 1988.
Valerie Canady, 25, a Morgantown native, and Harry Bainbridge, 34, a Fairmont native, were on their way home for Christmas when a bomb ripped through the Boeing 747-121 around 7:02 p.m. local time, killing all 243 passengers and 16 crewmembers on board. Large sections of the aircraft crashed onto residential areas of Lockerbie, Scotland, killing an additional 11 people on the ground.
Canady worked as an accountant in London for the Pittsburgh-based H.J. Heinz Co. She, like many other passengers, was on her way home for Christmas.
Bainbridge was an attorney for PepsiCo, returning home to New York after a business trip to Rome.
Known as the Lockerbie bombing, its believed to have been perpetrated by two Libyan nationals. One of those men, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi served more than 10 years in prison for the bombings, but was released from prison in August 2009. A second man, Lamin Khalifah Fhimah, went to trial but was acquitted.
As of October 2015, Scottish prosecutors announced they wanted to interview two Libyan nationals — identified as new suspects in the case.
There have been no further public developments since that disclosure.