AZUSA, Calif. — All six people aboard a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department helicopter survived after the aircraft crashed Saturday evening in the Angeles National Forest north of Azusa.
The helicopter’s passengers included five deputies and a University of California, Los Angeles doctor who was riding along with the crew, Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva said during a Sunday news briefing.
Of the five deputies who were wounded in the crash, one was critically injured, two suffered moderate injuries and two suffered minor injuries, Los Angeles County Fire Department Dispatch Supervisor Miguel Ornelas confirmed to KTLA.
Those aboard included a pilot, co-pilot, two paramedics, one crew chief and the doctor, KABC reported.
“They’re pretty banged up, some of them, and I’ll leave it at: there’s some fractures, some broken ribs, and some things of that nature,” Villanueva said.
Officials confirmed to KTLA that all six are expected to survive, but neither the identity nor the condition of the injured doctor were immediately known.
Villanueva said during the news conference that the helicopter was assisting the fire department with transporting a patient from a vehicle rollover but had not yet retrieved the patient when the aircraft “suffered some malfunction of some sort.”
“We don’t know if it was mechanical, environmental, what they call a brownout, a wind change, but as they were trying to descend … they suffered a hard landing and a rollover,” Villanueva said.
The sheriff also confirmed that the aircraft, known as Air 5, was a Super Puma heavy-lift helicopter, which is substantially larger than the choppers typically used for regular patrols, KABC reported.
“Considering where this occurred... the aircraft landed just a few feet from a 200-foot drop... so the fact that it did not roll over, go all the way down, or that there was no fire, is nothing short of a miracle,” Villanueva added.
Both the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board are investigating the crash.
Saturday’s crash comes exactly one month after a Huntington Beach Police Department helicopter crashed in Newport Beach, killing officer Nicholas Vella and injuring another pilot, KTLA reported.