The woman killed in the Southwest air disaster died of blunt trauma to the head, neck, and torso

AP

A composite image showing victim Jennifer Riordan (right) and the damaged plane on which she was fatally injured.

• Jennifer Riordan died from blunt impact after being sucked out of her seat mid-flight, medical experts ruled.
• She died from injuries caused by an engine failure on Southwest Airlines flight
• The NYC-Dallas service made an emergency landing after disaster struck.
• Officials in Philadelphia said her death was accidental.

The woman who died in a mid-air disaster aboard a Southwest Airlines flight caused by a failed engine was killed by blunt objects smacking into her head, neck, and torso, medical officials have ruled.

The official cause of death for 43-year-old Jennifer Riordan, a Wells Fargo executive from Albuquerque, New Mexico, was recorded as "blunt trauma impact."

Riordan's upper body was sucked out of her plane window by sudden decompression when her window broke. She was wearing a seatbelt.

She was hit by shrapnel flying from the nearby broken engine, and a passenger near her said she also smacked into the plane's fuselage.

Mark Makela / Reuters

The Southwest flight after its landing. The broken window is visible a few rows behind the engine.

Experts from the Philadelphia Medical Examiner's Office gave the assessment after the stricken flight made an emergency landing there. They also ruled that the death had been accidental.

The service, Flight 1380, was headed from New York City to Dallas, Texas. The engine failed mid-flight, prompting the pilot to make an emergency landing at Philadelphia.

Peggy Phillips, a nurse who was sitting a few rows in front of Riordan, described the moment of impact in an interview with Philadelphia news station 6 ABC.

She said: "If you can possibly imagine going through the window of an airplane at about 600mph, and hitting either the fuselage or the wing with your body, with your face, then I think I can probably tell you there was significant trauma."

Phillips spent 20 minutes trying to revive Riordan using CPR, but she died from her injuries.

Click here for Business Insider's other coverage of the Southwest disaster:

A Southwest passenger was partially sucked out of a plane window after an engine explosion - here's how it happened

The pilot who made the Southwest flight emergency landing is a former fighter pilot and one of the first women to fly an F-18

Investigators find missing parts of Southwest engine that exploded

A Southwest jet suffered an eerily similar engine failure in 2016

'Almost everyone' in a photo of Southwest's emergency landing wore their oxygen mask 'wrong,' says a former flight attendant

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