Remoak
You should remember that Richmond had fog or low cloud with 200m visibility and a little further on than Richmond the pilot reported to ATC that he was "on top". None of us know what it looked like from the air that day, but the pilot may have not been seeing very much ground at all.
To suggest that the professional thing to do is close both throttles and glide to land when the pilot could not see the ground completely lacks any insight of the likely circumstances. I'm sure that we'll get other opinions, but I doubt that any pilot - professional or otherwise - will descend to the ground through fog if there is an alternative.
I can just imagine your howls if the pilot did as you recommend and hit a hospital, school or something that was obscured by fog.