Helicopter Crashes In East River, 5 Dead: Officials

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — Five people died after a helicopter crashed into the East River on Sunday night, police and fire officials said.

The privately chartered craft descended into the river near East 86th Street around 7 p.m., NYPD Commissioner James O'Neill said Sunday. It crashed in the middle of the river into about 50 feet of water, officials said.

A witness posted video on Twitter showing the moment the helicopter hit the water. The aircraft is seen touching down on the river's surface and flipping onto its side as its rotor blades slice into the river.

Six people were on board when the helicopter went down, O'Neill said. The pilot was able to free himself from the aircraft, but five passengers had to be removed by FDNY and NYPD divers, Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro said.

Three of the five passengers were taken to the hospital in critical condition and two were pronounced dead on the scene, Nigro said. The three people taken to the hospital were later pronounced dead, an NYPD spokesman said. The four men and one woman who died had not been identified as of Monday morning, an NYPD spokesman said.

The helicopter's pilot was taken to the hospital and is "OK," Nigro said. He was identified as 33-year-old Richard Vance of Connecticut, an NYPD spokesman said. He was released from the hospital Monday morning, police said.

Vance put out a distress call over his radio as the chopper was going down. "Mayday, mayday, mayday," he called to air traffic controllers at LaGuardia Airport, according to a recording published by the New York Post.

The responding controller struggled to understand Vance as his radio crackled with static.

"East River, engine failure," Vance said after the controller asked him to repeat himself.

The LaGuardia controller still couldn't fully understand Vance's cry for help. Someone else on the radio had to explain the emergency.

"He had an engine failure over the East River," one pilot said.

"It was a mayday call, LaGuardia," another voice said over the radio.

The five passengers were secured into their seats by harnesses and had to be cut out of the aircraft, officials said. A privately operated tug boat was the first on the scene to help, O'Neill said.

Police and fire officials said the rescue operation was made difficult due to the distance of the crash from shore, a 4 mph current, cold temperatures and the fact that the helicopter flipped upside down in the water.

"It took a while for the divers to get these people out, they worked very quickly, as fast as they could," Nigro said Sunday.

"It's a great tragedy that we had occur here on an otherwise quiet Sunday evening."

The FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board will investigate the crash, the FAA said. The NTSB sent 14 personnel to the city Monday morning to help with the investigation, the agency said on Twitter.

The aircraft was owned by New Jersey-based Liberty Helicopter Tours and was chartered for a photo shoot, O'Neill said. The company said it is cooperating with the FAA and NTSB investigations and referred further questions to those agencies.

"We are focused on supporting the families affected by this tragic accident and on fully cooperating with the FFA and NTSB investigations," Liberty Helicopter Tours said in a statement posted on its website.

No one came out of the helicopter for at least a minute after it went down, Brianna Jesme, who saw the crash, told the New York Daily News.

"It was completely submerged," Celia Skvaril, another witness, told the Daily News. “We didn’t see the helicopter anymore and then a yellow raft popped up, and again we didn’t see or hear anyone until we saw a person on top of the raft screaming and yelling for help and waving.”

New York City Ferry service on the Astoria and East River routes was suspended after the crash, according to NYC Emergency Management.

Sunday night's crash is the latest in New York City involving a helicopter, the Associated Press reported. It's also one of the deadliest. A 2011 crash killed a British tourist and injured three others. In July 2007, a helicopter with eight people aboard crashed during a sightseeing tour but passengers were not injured.

Two helicopters crashed into the East River in one week in 2005, the Associated Press reported. One crash injured eight people and the other injured seven.

Feroze Dhanoa, Brendan Krisel and Noah Manskar contributed reporting and writing.

This story has been updated and corrected with additional details.

(Lead image: Emergency first responders attend a call after a helicopter crashed in the East River on Sunday. Photo by Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/Getty Images)