POMPANO BEACH, Fla. – “It’s a helicopter . . . looks like a medic helicopter, a red one, the whole back end is on fire,” one caller told 911 around 8:45 a.m. on Monday, Aug. 28.
Another caller reported: ““It was a helicopter on fire, and it just broke in half in the sky and fell probably about a thousand feet.”
And someone nearby in his apartment tells the dispatcher: “There’s a massive fire right in front of my apartment complex.”
Another caller expressed their fear after witnessing the helicopter crash not too far from her home.
(Listen to the calls)
The crash of a BSO Air Rescue helicopter was reported just after 8:45 a.m. in the area of North Dixie Highway and Atlantic Boulevard, a half-mile southwest of the Pompano Beach Airpark.
Broward Sheriff Gregory Tony confirmed that, around 8:41 a.m., the flight crew was dispatched to a medical call regarding a traffic crash in North Lauderdale. A mother and her 4-year-old son had been hit by a car while waiting at a bus stop.
Within minutes after takeoff, the National Transportation Safety Board said the pilot reported a major mechanical failure when the left engine of the helicopter caught on fire.
Flight radar data shows the crew crossed I-95, but while they were en route to the scene, the pilot was forced to cancel.
Cellphone video captured the moments when the helicopter could be seen trailing smoke one second, then spinning uncontrollably the next before the tail caught fire. In an instant, the aircraft crashed on top of an apartment building near NW 10th Street and Dixie Highway.
Tony confirmed that 50-year-old Terryson Jackson, a Broward Sheriff Fire Rescue captain, was the person onboard the aircraft who died in the crash.
A woman inside the apartment building when the helicopter crash was also killed; her family identified her as 65-year-old Lurean Wheaton.
Authorities said Wheaton was asleep in her own bed when she was killed.
Local 10 News has learned that Tony sounded the alarm to county commissioners about the same helicopter and its aging and overworked fleet earlier this summer.
“Fire rescue helicopter that we’ve been utilizing has been around since 1999,” Tony said. “We’ve been piece mealing parts for years to maintain the flight capabilities.”
A 2017 aviation unit review by an outside company recommended the sale of the chopper, but aviation expert John Eversole said it does not mean the helicopter wasn’t safe and airworthy.
“If that’s done and when parts are replaced under useful life like they’re supposed to be, age of the aircraft is irrelevant,” Eversole said. “But for money, you can fly the airplane indenfinitely.”
An investigation into what caused the crash continues by the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board.