New York City East River chopper crash kills 1; 4 rescued

NEW YORK (AP) — A helicopter with five people aboard crashed into the East River on Tuesday afternoon after taking off from a launch pad on the riverbank, killing one passenger and injuring three others.

New York Police Department divers pulled the victim, a woman, from about 50 feet of water about an hour after the Bell 206 helicopter went down around 3 p.m. She was pronounced dead at the scene.

New York City rescue personnel work near the scene after a helicopter with five people aboard crashed into the East River on Tuesday afternoon, after taking off from a launch pad on the riverbank, killing one passenger and injuring the others. The red mooring ball marks the crash site.

Emergency crews arrived to find the chopper inverted in the murky water with just its skids showing on the surface. The pilot, Paul Dudley, and three passengers were bobbing in the chilly water, and it looked as though a man was diving down and coming back up, possibly in an attempt to rescue the remaining passenger, witnesses said.

Officers jumped in and pulled out two women and a man, police spokesman Paul Browne said. The women were in critical condition, and the man was stable. All were hospitalized. The pilot swam to the riverbank, remained at the scene and was uninjured.

Two of the passengers were believed to be British living in Portugal, and the other two lived in Australia, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said.

The private chopper went into the river off 34th Street in midtown Manhattan, a few blocks south of the United Nations headquarters. It's unclear what happened, but witnesses reported it was sputtering and appeared to be in some type of mechanical distress.

Joseph Belez was watching helicopters from a boardwalk.

"It was going up, and then all of a sudden it just spun itself and went down to the water," he said. "I was just watching it take off, and it was just all of a sudden spinning. It just went down. It was a shock. It really was."

A massive rescue effort was under way within minutes of the crash, with a dozen boats and divers down into the cold, grey water searching for the fifth passenger.

Britain's Foreign Office said it was investigating reports the passengers were British.

Joy Garnett and her husband were on the dock waiting to take the East River ferry to Brooklyn when they heard the blades of a helicopter and saw it start to take off from the nearby helipad. She said she saw it do "a funny curlicue."

"I thought, 'Is that some daredevil move?'" she said. "But it was obviously out of control. The body spun around at least two or three times, and then it went down."

She said the chopper had lifted about 25 feet off the ground before it dropped into the water without much of a splash. It flipped over, and the blades were sticking up out of the river. She said people on the dock started throwing in life jackets and buoys. Two people came up out of the waves.

"It didn't make much noise," she said. "It was just a splash and sunk."

The weather was clear but a little windy Tuesday, with winds of 10 mph gusting to 20 mph and visibility of 10 miles, according to the weather station at LaGuardia Airport, across the river in Queens. There were a few clouds at 3,500 feet above sea level, well above the typical flying altitude for helicopters. The water temperature was about 68 degrees.

The helicopter was from Linden, N.J., near the Statue of Liberty and the Newark, N.J., international airport and a popular base and refueling stop for helicopters operating in New York. The pilot apparently reported problems in the helicopter and said he was turning around, Bloomberg said.

Dudley is a commercial pilot and owns Linden Airport Services, the company that manages the Linden municipal airport under a 20-year contract with the city, Linden Mayor Richard Gerbounka said.

"He flies light aircraft, he flies helicopters," Gerbounka said. "He's an accomplished pilot."

In November 2006, Dudley landed a Cessna 172 light plane in a park near Coney Island in Brooklyn after the engine failed. No one was hurt during the emergency landing, and the plane was taken back to Linden after mechanics removed the wings.

In Tuesday's crash, counterterrorism officers responded first to the scene and jumped into the water to rescue the passengers. Firefighters also rescued one of the passengers.

Carlos Acevedo, of Puerto Rico, was with his wife at a nearby park area when they saw the helicopter go down.

"It sank fast," he said. "In seconds. Like the water was sucking it in."

Lau Kamg was leaving a dentist's office and was walking nearby when he saw the chopper go down. He said it appeared to be in distress.