The crash killed three people, NBC News reported. A news helicopter crashed in the Chatsworth community of Los Angeles while covering a bus collision Tuesday evening, September 15.
NBC News reported on air that the aircraft involved in the crash was their own. It earlier said that it had lost contact with those on board. Powers was an American pilot who served as a United States Air Force officer and a CIA employee. He had been recording video after brush fires in Santa Barbara County and was heading back to Burbank Airport when the aircraft ran out of fuel and crashed at the Sepulveda Dam recreational area in Encino, California.
The crash brings flashbacks of the death of Francis Gary Powers, who died in a 1977 Encino helicopter crash on August 1, 1977, while working as a news helicopter pilot for KNBC in Los Angeles. He is best known for his involvement in the 1960 U-2 incident, when he was shot down while flying a secret CIA spying mission over the Soviet Union. On the day of his death, Powers was piloting a Bell 206 JetRanger helicopter for Los Angeles TV station KNBC Channel 4 over the San Fernando Valley.
The chopper crashed in a parking lot at or near a self-storage facility in the community, which is in Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley, according to the Los Angeles Fire Department and news video on the ground from NBC Los Angeles.
Fire Capt.
another individual was rushed to a hospital in unknown condition, the fire department said While three people died at the scene. Branden Silverman said at the scene that at least one of the deceased appeared to be a pedestrian on the ground when the chopper crashed.
