 |
||||||||
 |
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
Sheriff's copter crash lands
By MATTHEW WAITE, Times Staff Writer
NEW PORT RICHEY -- A Pasco County sheriff's helicopter narrowly missed several houses and made a hard emergency landing on a quiet street Thursday night after the craft apparently suffered engine problems. The helicopter, with pilot Richard Morse and spotter Deputy John Stanina on board, had taken off from an airstrip at 7:42 p.m. at Hidden Lakes, a subdivision in west Pasco, on the way to a home invasion call in Moon Lake.
According to Pasco sheriff's Lt. Gary Kling, the helicopter reached 500 feet in the air when the pilot noticed engine troubles. The pilot and spotter started looking for a safe place to land and radioed for help at 7:51 p.m. They put down at Bentwood Court and Chadwick Drive. "I turned around, and it was coming straight at me," said Martin Smith, who lives two doors down from where the helicopter ended up. "I stepped back and when he hit the ground, I knew I had to get out of there because stuff started flying." The helicopter, judging by scars in the pavement, hit just west of the intersection, bounced and skidded to a stop in the middle of Chadwick Drive. The tail rotor of the helicopter was broken off and was in a nearby yard. Moments after the crash, the pilot and spotter both emerged, shaken but unharmed. "I was expecting an explosion, which, thank God, never happened," said Jerry Morgan, who lives close to where the helicopter landed. Morgan heard the low flying craft and ran outside to see what was happening. Then he headed back inside for the phone. "I couldn't call 911 fast enough," he said. Kling said at 9 p.m. that investigators from the Federal Aviation Administration were on the way to where the helicopter went down. That agency would determine the cause of the crash. "They put it down literally between houses," said Sheriff Bob White. "I think they did a great job." The pilot, Morse, has been flying helicopters since the Vietnam War. The helicopter is a Hughes 500 that was built in 1968 and is a military surplus helicopter, said Pasco sheriff's Maj. Maurice Radford. He said the helicopter had been serviced recently and was 300 flight hours from a major overhaul, which are done every 500 flight hours. The craft had been flown Wednesday night without a problem, Radford said. "This was totally unexpected." The people who live in the River Ridge neighborhood who came out to see what all the racket was said they were astonished, and relieved. "He crashed it very well," said Joyce Hennessy, who lives nearby. "Nobody got hurt. That's perfect."
 © 2006 • All Rights Reserved • Tampa Bay Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111 
|
From today's Pasco Times |
