The dramatic new video captures the hopeless efforts by the NYPD’s first responders, as authorities determined that they caused a wreck that killed six people, including still three young children, to revive the victims of last week’s fatal Hudson River helicopter crash.
Cool footage released by police on Wednesday shows at least half a dozen NYPD boats and scuba teams rushing to a tourist chopper floating upside down near the Dutch Tunnel Bent Tower near the New Jersey coast.
In one heart-pounding scene, one responder appears to be riding one of the police boats and performing CPR on the victim. Meanwhile, the body shown on the nearby pier is blurred from the video.
The department’s diving units were already in the river at the time of the crash, looking for someone reported missing from the port on South Street a day ago.
“The day before, there was another job, a missing person. We were scanning to see if we could find him,” said Joseph Frebola, of the NYPD Scuba division, on Wednesday. “Then the phone came in and headed towards the helicopter crash as soon as possible. We were there in about 8-10 minutes.”
Flebola said divers must compete with strong currents and winds fueled by the full moon.
“When we first got on the water, it wasn’t that bad, but we had to be there all day and equipped with helicopters for the Army to raise,” he said. “At that point, the current was flipping over and it was pretty bad. We were level, clutching the helicopter and rigging to connect it to the crane.”
Bell 2026L-4 Long Ranger IV jumped into the water on April 10th, killing pilot Sean Kejonson, a navy veteran, and five families from Spain.
Escobars booked a Chopper flight on a New York helicopter tour and flew a large apple when the tragedy struck 18 minutes after takeoff, authorities said.
Authorities said Chopper, who was on his eighth flight that day, had no flight recorder. New York helicopter tours were closed three days after crash, the Federal Aviation Administration announced.
The NYPD Scuba Unit washed the dark river for days and retrieved debris from the fuselage to the cell phone for anything that would help determine the cause of the fatal shipwreck.
After 29 dives from Thursday to Monday, the National Transportation Safety Board investigators are pleased.
However, NYPD divers did not discuss their efforts to recover the victim’s bodies.
