Killer in the cockpit; Suicide Pilot has mental illness

            Crazed pilot should not even have been at work

Investigators trying to piece together why killer co-pilot Andreas Lubitz crashed his plane into a mountain today announced he'd torn up a doctor's sick note for the day of the disaster.

Andreas Lubitz locked the captain out of the cockpit of a Germanwings Airbus A320 on Tuesday before setting the airliner's controls to descend into a rocky valley, obliterating the plane and killing all 150 people on board.

After details of his mental health problems began to emerge today, it was suggested he may have stopped taking his medication so it would not be detected in any medical tests or slipped into desperation during a crisis in his relationship.

Described as a man whose life-long obsession had been to become a pilot, another theory is that he feared his flying licence - due to expire in just three months time - might not be renewed.

But as detectives try to work out what drove him to kill himself and so many others, the grief of victims' families turned to anger at how a man with a history of mental health problems was allowed to fly a plane packed with passengers.

Christian Driessens, whose 59-year-old brother Claude died on the Airbus A320, said the co-pilot should not have been allowed anywhere near the cockpit.

He said: ‘Looking back, I slowly start to be angry. I don’t understand how a serious company can let a depressed man pilot a plane.

‘Because the boy was depressed, it was necessary to say he was. It’s not normal to leave somebody by himself in charge, and who shuts the doors, I’m very angry.'

In a statement released this lunchtime, Ralf Herrenbrueck, a spokesman for the German prosecutors office, revealed that torn-up sick notes for the day of the crash 'support the current preliminary assessment that the deceased hid his illness from his employer and colleagues'.

Mr Herrenbrueck said documents found indicated 'an existing illness and appropriate medical treatment' , but he didn't confirm details of what illness Lubitz was suffering from. Germanwings, a subsidiary of Lufthansa, declined to comment on the new information.

German police are now investigating whether Lubitz had stopped taking any medication he was on and have questioned chemists at the Apotheke am Breidenplatz close to Lubitz's Dusseldorf flat.

Lubitz regularly collected a prescription from the pharmacy, MailOnline understands. A chemist at the Apotheke confirmed she had spoken to the police but declined to offer any details.

The chemist told MailOnline: 'The police have visited the pharmacy this morning. But I cannot talk about anything that occurs inside the pharmacy. We are required to protect all information about patients.' 

As well as having been signed off from training with depression in 2008, it was reported this morning that Lubitz had continued to receive mental health support up until this week's crash.

Friends have told how Lubitz, whose pilot's licence was up for renewal in June, had a life-long obsession with planes and 'would have died' if he had not have passed his flying exams.

SOURCE: DAILYMAIL