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TV Chopper Crashes Live While Covering Story, Both Aboard Die
Considering all the traffic in the skies over a busy city, it's always been amazing to me this doesn't happen more often. A KNBC-TV reporter and her pilot were killed Tuesday, after the craft went down while covering a fire. Another person believed to be on the ground also perished.
Eli Morena once described her job as 'the best in the world' and she'd become engaged to her fiancé just a year ago. It happened live on air and the reporter could be heard telling her pilot to "pull up." Her last words were "You can't pull up?" before the camera shakes and the video disappears.
You can see the brief footage here.
Meanwhile the anchors at the station were left almost speechless by the sudden disaster and told viewers they were checking on what had happened. Eventually, they confirmed the worst news on air.
It's not clear what caused the accident, but other pilots have speculated from the sound on the broadcast, it may have been engine failure.
3 people killed when NBC and Telemundo news helicopter crashes while covering LA bus collision
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Re: TV Chopper Crashes Live While Covering Story, Both Aboard Die
This reminds me of another terrible deadly broadcast chopper crash. And this one also happened live on air.
It was back in 1986, when Buffalo radio legend Joey Reynolds was throwing to a regular traffic report on WNBC-AM in New York. Jane Dornacker was on that chopper along with her pilot. At first, everything seemed perfectly normal, as she describes the usual gridlock in the Big Apple.
But suddenly you hear a disturbing noise, as it appears the rotor on the bird stops working. Dornacker interrupts her traffic report and her last words to her pilot are absolutely chilling. "HIT THE WATER! HIT THE WATER! HIT THE WATER," she screams and then the sound goes eerily dead.
Reynolds, who is usually completely unflappable, comes back on mic audibly shaken and says 'Sounds like something happened,' and promises the audience an update. When it comes, it's the worst news possible. Both Dornacker and her pilot were killed when the chopper crashed.
You can hear the chilling broadcast below.
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