Siemens’ Spanish CEO dies in helicopter Crash!
New York City, US, Apr 11 (EFE).-
Agustin Escobar, CEO of the Spanish branch of tech company Siemens, his wife, and their three children were five of the six passengers killed after a helicopter crashed in the Hudson River in New York City on Thursday, The New York Times reported.
Escobar’s wife, Merce Camprubi Montal, was the global manager of an energy technology company.
The helicopter’s pilot also died in the crash, New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who confirmed that the deceased included a family of Spanish tourists, including three children.
The helicopter belonged to a tour company called New York Helicopter Tours, which offers panoramic tours of New York from the sky.
According to flight tracking data from Flightradar 24, the helicopter (a Bell 206) had been in the air for 15 minutes and covered six nautical miles before crashing.
The aircraft took off from the Downtown Manhattan Heliport.
It headed south before flying north to the George Washington Bridge, and then headed south again along the New Jersey coast, when it lost control near Hoboken.
The aircraft crashed at 3:15 pm on a day with very low temperatures of around 5 degrees Celsius.
According to images broadcast by several TV stations, a helicopter with its tail broken can be seen plunging into the river.
Divers from the fire department, as well as from the New York Police Department and neighboring New Jersey, retrieved the bodies from the water, although it is unclear whether any were alive at first.
Police Chief Jessica Tisch said that the crash occurred at approximately 3:17 pm, after which emergency services responded quickly.
Divers recovered four bodies and then an additional two other passengers, who later died in the hospital.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul, also confirmed the deaths of six people in the “horrific crash” to the media.
According to images broadcast by various media outlets, the helicopter appears to disintegrate in midair before falling into the water.
The images, from anonymous people who filmed the accident, show the helicopter’s blades still spinning on their own in the sky, separated from the body of the aircraft, which also appears to have lost its tail.
At least 32 people have died in helicopter accidents in New York since 1977; the most recent in 2019, when a helicopter used for executive travel crashed into the roof of a Manhattan skyscraper in restricted airspace, killing the pilot.
In terms of fatalities, this is the worst accident of its kind since 2018, when five of the six passengers on a helicopter that had taken off from New Jersey died after it fell into the icy waters of the East River, the other river that flows through Manhattan. EFE
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