Australian woman killed in tour helicopter crash in Hawaii
An Australian woman is among the three killed in a helicopter crash in Hawaii.
Fire and helicopter parts rained from the sky Monday (local time) in a suburban Honolulu community as a tour helicopter crashed and killed all three people aboard, officials and witnesses said.
The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade confirmed to Yahoo News Australia in a statement an Australian woman had died and it was providing consular assistance to her family.
A pilot who moved to Hawaii two weeks ago from New Mexico also died in the crash, along with a tourist from the US mainland.
The Honolulu medical examiner’s office hasn’t released the names of those who died.
The crash occurred in Kailua, a town of 50,000 people about a 30-minute drive from downtown Honolulu.
The crash site was on a two-lane road amid one and two-story homes.
“All you could see was fire,” witness Melissa Solomon said, explaining that she was driving on the street when she looked up to see flames and a helicopter plummeting in front of her.
She said she had turn onto another street because she was afraid more pieces were going to fall from the sky onto her and her 16-year-old daughter sitting in the front passenger seat.
“We could have been smashed by it,” she said.
Darel Robinson was doing construction work at a house about 800 metres from the crash site when he heard what sounded like helicopter blades thumping and then a loud boom.
“It was going nose down and parts were starting to fly off,” he said.
Pilot ‘moved to Hawaii two weeks ago’
Jospeh Berridge, 28, who moved to Hawaii two weeks ago from New Mexico, was the pilot who died along with two passengers when a tour helicopter crashed on the Honolulu street, his father said.
“It was always my son’s dream to go to Hawaii and fly tours for a couple of years,” Bobby Berridge said.
His son’s girlfriend and dog were preparing to join him.
The cause of the crash has not been determined.
Investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board were at the crash site Tuesday.
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