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Peru Helicopter Crash Leaves 5 Americans, 2 Others Dead
LIMA, Peru — Investigators picked through the wreckage Tuesday of a heavily loaded U.S.-owned cargo helicopter that crashed in the Peruvian jungle shortly after takeoff, killing its five American and two Peruvian crew members.
The tandem-rotor Chinook BH-234 chopper, owned by Columbia Helicopters, Inc. of the Portland suburb of Aurora, Oregon, crashed Monday near from the provincial capital of Pucallpa.
It was under contract for petroleum exploration support and en route to a drilling location in northern Peru, said Todd Peterson, the company’s vice president of marketing.
Witnesses quoted in local media reports said it lost control and spewed smoke before crashing.
The Pucallpa airport control tower had its last contact with the aircraft at 3:03 p.m., five minutes after takeoff, Peru’s civil aviation authority reported, and controllers saw “a big cloud of smoke” four miles northeast of the airport.
A local police commander, Miguel Cardoso, told The Associated Press that three bodies were recovered Monday and three more on Tuesday, inside the chopper’s charred wreckage. He said the three taken to the morgue Monday apparently had jumped from the chopper, as witnesses reported.
“They have different trauma. It appears they jumped out of the helicopter out of desperation, because they have multiple fractures,” Cardoso said by phone.
The five dead Americans, all but one U.S.-based, were identified by their employer as Dann Immel, command pilot, of Gig Harbor, Washington, Edwin Cordova, maintenance crew chief, of Melbourne, Florida, Jaime Pickett, mechanic, of Clarksville, Tennessee, Darrel Birkes, senior load manager, an Oregonian living in Peru, and Leon Bradford, a load manager from Santaquin, Utah.
The two Peruvians were co-pilot Igor Castillo and mechanic Luis Ramos, the company said in a release.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/08…d%3D254209
2013-01-08 16:22:40
Source: http://yeoldefalseflag.com/thread-peru-helicopter-crash-leaves-5-americans-2-others-dead
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