Helicopter Accidents

A helicopter on a medical evacuation crashed in southwest Indiana, killing the heart patient on board and injuring the three crew members, officials said. Jerry Leonard, 63, died from suffocation because the impact caused his stretcher's chest strap to become positioned around his neck, said deputy coroner Darrel Healy. Leonard was being flown from Huntingburg to an Evansville hospital when the helicopter crashed about 20 miles outside Evansville, State Police Sgt. Todd Ringle said.

An Army Black Hawk helicopter that vanished during a training flight was found on the banks of the Great Pee Dee River after it was spotted by a trucker. Searchers recovered the bodies of three soldiers who were aboard, Army officials said. The wreckage was found near a bridge off Interstate 95, about 100 miles northeast of Columbia, officials said. The helicopter was reported missing Monday night during a flight from Fort Bragg, N.C., to Florence.

Commercial divers searched futilely last week for the black box of a Coast Guard helicopter that crashed into the Bering Sea while it was trying to rescue the crew of a grounded freighter. The divers searched near the freighter's stern Friday after they heard signals coming from the helicopter's data recorder. "They could hear it pinging, but they just couldn't find it," said Coast Guard Petty Officer Sarah Francis.

A helicopter crashed into a house alongside an airstrip and golf course in this Sierra Nevada foothill community Wednesday afternoon, killing at least one person, authorities said. It was not immediately clear if the victim was in the helicopter or the home, officials said.

A rescue helicopter carrying 15 hunters and a crew of four was missing in Kyrgyzstan, the Emergencies Ministry said. The hunters had been trapped in a snowstorm for two days in the central Kyrgyzstan mountains, the ministry said. Two Americans and one Canadian were among those aboard.

Egypt's Patriarch of Alexandria, a top Greek Orthodox leader, was killed in a helicopter crash, Greek authorities said. A military spokesman said rescuers had found seven bodies and were searching for 10 others. Petros VII, 55, was on a pilgrimage to monasteries on Greece's Mt. Athos when the helicopter went down 20 miles away for unknown reasons and sank in deep water.

At least 27 people were feared killed when a helicopter crashed off India's west coast as it ferried employees of a state-run oil firm from an offshore rig, a company official said. The Russian-built Mi-172 helicopter, carrying 29 people, was chartered by India's Oil & Natural Gas Corp.

Polish Prime Minister Leszek Miller and at least eight associates were injured when a helicopter carrying 15 people made an emergency landing in a field south of Warsaw. Technical problems were blamed. "The prime minister is in a good and stable condition and doesn't require surgery," said Dr. Grazyna Rydzewska at a Warsaw hospital. Later reports indicated that Miller's thoracic vertebrae were fractured. He was returning from a visit to a copper mine in southwestern Poland.

U.S. military officials said they are reevaluating flying patterns and procedures in the wake of the crash of a Black Hawk helicopter in Tikrit on Friday that left six dead and may have been the result of enemy fire. But officials said there is no way they can reduce their dependence on helicopters in Iraq, or guarantee that the string of deadly aircraft incidents won't continue.

A U.S. Black Hawk helicopter was "forced down" today in the north-central Iraqi city of Tikrit, killing at least four soldiers and injuring two, a U.S. military spokesman said, but it was not immediately known whether mechanical failure or hostile fire was involved. A quick-reaction force was securing the area along the Tigris River about half a mile from a U.S. base, the spokesman said. The total number of people on board was not known.