NEWS | THE NORTHPORT RECORD, SEPTEMBER 2, 2004

Two Die In Helicopter Horror

Hundreds watch as rotor tears off and craft plunges into Sound

By Michael R. Sisak / The Northport Record

Children frolicked on the swings and climbed on the jungle gym as a line of yellow crime scene tape blustered in the sunset breeze at Crabmeadow Beach in Northport, last Sunday.

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A few hundred yards away, in the shallow waters of Long Island Sound, investigators on police boats secured the gruesome, mangled wreckage of a helicopter that crashed just off the coast, about 6:02 p.m.

Both people on board – Simon A. Gibson, 29, a flight instructor from West Babylon, and Ronald Somers, 37, a flight student from Huntington – were killed.

The helicopter, a two-seat Robinson R-22B owned by the Eastern Flight School, took off from Long Island MacArthur Airport in Islip and was flying normally, eastbound, a few hundred feet above the perimeter of the Crabmeadow shore when it encountered trouble about 6:02 p.m., according to horrified witnesses. A rotor broke off and a loud pop was heard. Several witnesses said the helicopter blades may have struck a kite. Sparks shot from the top of the craft and it was sent on a wayward spin toward its demise.

“I thought he was doing acrobatics,” said August Longo, of Smithtown, recounting the moments before the crash. “He made three violent turns – one to the left, one to the right and another to the left.”

Courtney Groelinger of East Northport, a 2003 Northport High School graduate and student at St. Joseph’s College, was preparing for a barbeque at the town-owned beach with colleagues from Pat’s Meat Farms, when she saw the helicopter go down.

“The propeller on the top broke off and he was swerving,” Groelinger said. “People were yelling to call 911… then it was like dead silence… It felt like a movie almost… I couldn’t believe that it happened.”

Groelinger said she saw what appeared to be a kite near the helicopter in the seconds before the crash, but said she could not believe that it would cause such a catastrophe.

“It definitely looked like something was up there, but I couldn’t see how a kite could bring something down like that,” Groelinger said. “It looked like the main part of the kite kind of broke off and got stuck.”

Moments after the helicopter hit the Sound and began to submerge in 6 to 8 feet of water, Town of Huntington senior lifeguard Dan Kast and emergency medical technician Stephan Kerekes swam to the craft and pulled Somers to land, Don McKay, a spokesman for the town, said. Gibson, the two men determined, was trapped inside the metal cage of the helicopter and his head was slashed. He was pronounced dead on the scene.

On the shore, Kerekes performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation as dozens of stunned beachgoers looked on. Beach attendant Joey Callagy alerted the authorities and Somers was transported to Huntington Hospital by an advanced life support team from the East Northport Fire Department, according to chief Tom Mattos. Somers was pronounced dead on arrival.

“This was obviously a tremendous emotional and devastating accident and our employees responded incredibly,” McKay said. “This could have been worse. If that helicopter landed 100 yards shorter, it could have landed on Crabmeadow Beach.”

After evidence collection and analysis was completed and Gibson’s body was removed, late Sunday night, the helicopter was dragged by boat to the Soundview boat ramp in Northport, where it was loaded onto a truck and transported to Westhampton for further investigation by the Suffolk County Police, the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board.

Crabmeadow remained open Sunday night until its 8 p.m. closing time, and the children kept playing, a stark contrast to the investigation that was getting under way. The beach was open again on Monday morning after an extensive walk through by beach employees, who looked for leaks of fluid and small parts along the sand, McKay said.