The nighttime collision of a Coast Guard aircraft on a rescue mission and a Marine helicopter left nine people missing, feared dead, at sea on Friday as investigators tried to solve the mystery of how the aircrews failed to see each other in a heavily used military training area.
Military aircraft and ships searched the ocean off Southern California for any sign of the victims, while investigators gathered recordings of air traffic controllers and pilot communications. The search covered 1,667km² of ocean, but focused on a debris field 80km off the San Diego coast.
The crash involved a Coast Guard C-130 with a seven-member crew and a Marine Corps AH-1W Super Cobra with two aboard as it flew in formation near the Navy’s San Clemente Island, a site with training ranges for amphibious, air, surface and undersea warfare. It was not known whether the pilots were aware of each other before the 7:10pm collision.
“A tragic event,” Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said. “The search is still on, but it’s likely taken the lives of nine individuals.”
In San Diego, crews of Navy ships, Coast Guard cutters and helicopters planned to keep scouring the ocean, even though nearly a full day had passed since the accident.
“We’re still in the search-and-rescue phase, we are not standing down from that at this point,” said Captain Tom Farris, commander of the Coast Guard’s San Diego sector. “We have every hope we will find survivors.”
The identities of the crew members were not immediately known.
The C-130 crew had survival gear aboard the aircraft, including exposure suits that could have allowed them to survive in the water for hours, Petty Officer Henry Dunphy said.
The Sacramento-based C-130 crew was looking for a man on a 3.6m motorized skiff who was reported missing after leaving Avalon Harbor on Santa Catalina Island to reach a friend on a disabled yacht that had gone adrift off Catalina in high winds on Tuesday, authorities said.
The Marine helicopter was flying from Camp Pendleton near San Diego to San Clemente Island, said Major Jay Delarosa, a spokesman for Marine Corps Air Station Miramar in San Diego.
Two Super Cobras, a type of attack helicopter, were escorting two big CH-53E Super Stallion transport helicopters carrying Marines to the island, Delarosa said. He did not know how many Marines were aboard the transports.
After the collision, the other three helicopters returned to base, he said.
The accident occurred in airspace uncontrolled by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and inside a so-called military warning area, which is at times open to civilian aircraft and at times closed for military use, said FAA spokesman Ian Gregor, who added that he did not know the status of the airspace at the time.
Kouri Richins, a Utah mother who published a children’s book about grief after the death of her husband is to serve a life sentence for his murder without the possibility of parole, a judge ruled on Wednesday. Richins was convicted in March of aggravated murder for lacing a cocktail given to her husband, Eric Richins, with five times the lethal dose of fentanyl at their home near Park City in 2022. A jury also found her guilty of four other felonies, including insurance fraud, forgery and attempted murder for trying to poison her husband weeks earlier on Feb. 14, 2022, with a
‘PERSONAL MISTAKES’: Eileen Wang has agreed to plead guilty to the felony, which comes with a maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison A southern California mayor has agreed to plead guilty to acting as an illegal agent for the Chinese government and has resigned from her city position, officials said on Monday. Eileen Wang (王愛琳), mayor of Arcadia, was charged last month with one count of acting in the US as an illegal agent of a foreign government. She was accused of doing the bidding of Chinese officials, such as sharing articles favorable to Beijing, without prior notification to the US government as required by law. The 58-year-old was elected in November 2022 to a five-person city council, from which the mayor is selected
DELA ROSA CASE: The whereabouts of the senator, who is wanted by the ICC, was unclear, while President Marcos faces a political test over the senate situation Philippine authorities yesterday were seeking confirmation of reports that a top politician wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) had fled, a day after gunfire rang out at the Philippine Senate where he had taken refuge fearing his arrest. Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, the former national police chief and top enforcer of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs,” has been under Senate protection and is wanted for crimes against humanity, the same charges Duterte is accused of. “Several sources confirmed that the senator, Senator Bato, is no longer in the Senate premises, but we are still getting confirmation,” Presidential
HELP DENIED? The US Department of State said that the Cuban leadership refuses to allow the US to provide aid to Cubans, ‘who are in desperate need of assistance’ US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday said that Cuba’s leadership must change, as Washington renewed an offer of US$100 million in aid if the communist nation agrees to cooperate. Cuba has been suffering severe economic tumult led by an energy shortage that plunged 65 percent of the country into darkness on Tuesday. Cuba’s leaders have blamed US sanctions, but Rubio, a Cuban American and critic of the government established by Fidel Castro, said the system was to blame, including corruption by the military. “It’s a broken, nonfunctional economy, and it’s impossible to change it. I wish it were different,” he told
RSS