Three Dead After Medical Helicopter Crashes Off Catalina Island
Police divers found the body of the missing patient inside the wreckage of a medical helicopter that crashed into the Pacific off Santa Catalina Island, bringing the death toll to three.
Divers with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department located the victim on Thursday in wreckage about 200 feet below the surface. The U.S. Coast Guard ended its offshore search at 5:44 p.m. Thursday after the discovery, closing a 23-hour effort that covered more than 156 square miles U.S. Coast Guard. First responders had pulled four people from the water on Wednesday night, hours after the aircraft went down The Guardian.
The helicopter was carrying five people. It went down shortly after takeoff and hit the water not far from Catalina Island near Los Angeles.
Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said authorities were not naming the victims yet. He described two of the people who died as a male pilot and a female nurse. He said another medic and a fourth person, a man, were hospitalized. Two other people were recovering from injuries after the crash.
Relatives told ABC7 the missing patient was a woman being flown from Catalina Island to the mainland for care after an allergic reaction. They said her 20-year-old son was aboard to help as a language interpreter.
The operator was Reach Air Medical Services of Sacramento. The company confirmed two of its crew members died and a third was recovering in a hospital. Tracking data from Flightradar24, a service that follows aircraft movements, showed the helicopter had landed on Catalina Island shortly after 7 p.m. after a 24-minute flight from an airport in Oceanside. A memorial service was held on Catalina Island to honor the victims.
The cause of the crash is not clear. The National Transportation Safety Board, the federal agency that investigates aircraft accidents, is investigating.
The broader context here is the gap between what is settled and what is still unknown. The number aboard, the operator, the inbound flight from Oceanside to Catalina and the wreckage location are settled. How a helicopter that had just flown that route went down soon after taking off again is not. For the families, for the island community that depends on air transport to mainland hospitals, and for the operator's crews, the investigation carries weight beyond a single report. Its value will be in reconstructing a brief window, from takeoff to impact, where small technical and operational details matter.
