Divers recover fifth body after NY helicopter crash

DIVERS recovered a piece of a submerged helicopter and a fifth body yesterday as investigators searched the Hudson River for wreckage from the helicopter and a small plane that collided in midair, killing nine people.

Investigators also were searching for pictures and video of Saturday’s accident, which was seen by thousands of people enjoying a beautiful summer’s day.

Nine people – three members of a Pennsylvania family in the private plane, five Italian tourists and a pilot from New Jersey in the Liberty Tours helicopter – died in Saturday’s collision, the city’s worst air disaster since a 2001 commercial jet crash in Queens that killed 265 people. One of the Italian victims was a husband celebrating his 25th wedding anniversary, a family friend said. His wife had stayed behind, but their 16-year-old son was also in the helicopter.

Yesterday morning divers recovered a torso stuffed in the fuselage of the helicopter wreckage, two law enforcement officials told The Associated Press.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg said a fifth body was also recovered yesterday.

National Transportation Safety Board chairperson Debbie Hersman said a nearby helicopter pilot saw the plane approaching the in-flight helicopter and tried to alert his fellow pilot. He radioed the doomed helicopter and said, “You have a fixed-wing behind you,” but there was no response from the pilot, Hersman said.

The pilot then saw the plane’s right wing clip the helicopter, and both aircraft split apart and fell into the river, she said.

The two aircraft went down just south of the stretch of river where a US Airways jet landed safely seven months ago.

But this accident was, in Bloomberg’s words, “unsurvivable.”

Yesterday morning, New York Police Department boats about 100 yards from Hoboken’s waterfront circled three buoys that marked the wreckage of the helicopter, and three New Jersey State Police divers were in the choppy waters. The plane had not yet been found.

A US Army Corps of Engineers crane was moved up the river near the helicopter wreckage, which authorities hoped to remove by last night.