German prosecutors say the co-pilot of Germanwings Flight 9525 appears to have researched suicide methods and cockpit door security in the days before the plane crashed last week.
Duesseldorf prosecutors said Thursday investigators found a tablet computer at Andreas Lubitz's apartment. They said they were able to reconstruct searches from March 16 to March 23.
Investigators believe the 27-year-old Lubitz locked his captain out of the A320's cockpit on March 24 and deliberately crashed the plane. All 150 on board died.
Prosecutors' spokesman Ralf Herrenbrueck said in a statement that search terms included medical treatment and suicide methods. On at least one day, the co-pilot looked at search terms involving cockpit doors and their security methods.
Meanwhile, French prosecutors say the second black box recorder from the Germanwings jet crash in the French Alps has been found.
An official in Marseille Prosecutor Brice Robin's office says he will give a news conference Thursday evening about the discovery.
Based on recordings from the first black box, investigators believe co-pilot Andreas Lubitz intentionally crashed Flight 9525 on March 24.
The second black box is the data recorder and contains readings for nearly every instrument.
Germanwings now says it was unaware that the co-pilot of its plane that crashed into the French Alps last week had suffered from depression during his pilot training.
Lufthansa, the parent company of Germanwings, confirmed Tuesday that it knew six years ago that Lubitz had suffered from an episode of "severe depression" before he finished his flight training, but said he passed all his medical checks after that.
A spokeswoman for Germanwings, where Lubitz started work in September 2013, said today that it didn't know about the depressive episode when Lufthansa did. (AP)
