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Investigators take helicopter
By KENT FISCHER, Times Staff Writer
NEW PORT RICHEY -- The Federal Aviation Administration has carted off a Pasco County Sheriff's Office helicopter that crash-landed in a River Ridge neighborhood Thursday night. The agency has also taken the aircraft's maintenance records as it begins an investigation into the accident. And although nobody was seriously injured in the crash-landing, the Sheriff's Office did sustain a casualty to an important piece of crime-fighting equipment: Destroyed was an infrared sensor that allowed deputies to conduct nighttime searches. The infrared sensor, attached to the nose of the helicopter, was designed to sense a 2-degree difference in heat. The office bought the equipment in 1998 for $135,000. "It was the only one we had," said spokesman Kevin Doll of the infrared sensor, "and we were getting a lot of use out of it." The Hughes OH-6 helicopter was severely roughed up, too. Its tail boom snapped off, and its landing skids were wrecked, said Tim Monville, an investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board, which is also investigating why the chopper's engine failed shortly after takeoff. "I'm told the tail boom was separated by contact with the main rotor," he said. "The damage the helicopter sustained was substantial." Witnesses said the tail snapped off when it hit a stop sign. Two other Hughes OH-6 helicopters operated by law enforcement agencies have crashed in west-central Florida in the past 13 months, one in Citrus County and one in Hillsborough County. Doll said there are no plans to ground the department's three other flyable helicopters. One of the remaining choppers is of the same model as the one wrecked Thursday. "It was one of our better-performing helicopters," Doll said of the crashed aircraft. "This was totally unexpected." The chopper, in fact, had flown Wednesday without incident. The Hughes chopper was built in 1968, and was purchased by the Sheriff's Office as military surplus in either 1994 or 1995. It cost the agency $100 and has logged 5,600 hours of flight time, slightly more than half its expected life span, Doll said. During night flying, the helicopter cruises at an altitude of 800 feet. Monville, of the NTSB, said his agency has requested copies of the helicopter's records and will ask the maker of the aircraft's engine to help them figure out what went wrong. The chopper had taken off at 7:42 p.m. Thursday from the airport at Hidden Lake Estates off Ridge Road, less than a mile from where it crash-landed. It was sent up to help deputies search for suspects in a Moon Lake home invasion. It was in the air less than 10 minutes before its engine began to fail -- a "spool down" in pilot's parlance. Pilot Richard Morse took the helicopter down from about 600 feet and crash-landed it in the intersection of Brentwood Court and Chadwick Drive in River Ridge, a neighborhood dense with homes. Debris from the landing scattered over yards and driveways. Neither Morse nor John Stanina, a deputy who was riding in the helicopter, were available for interviews Friday. Morse was unhurt; Stanina suffered a mild neck injury, according to a deputy's report of the crash. As for the home invasion, no one had been arrested Friday. -- Information from the Times archives was used in this report.
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