Two people were dead, two were taken to a hospital and a fifth was missing at sea after a helicopter crash on Wednesday night near Santa Catalina Island off Southern California.
The Los Angeles County Fire Department, the Coast Guard, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and other units responded when the helicopter went down just before 8 p.m. off the island’s Pebbly Beach.
Often called Catalina Island, it is about 20 miles southwest of Los Angeles.
Four people were recovered from the water, the fire department said. Two of them were pronounced dead at the scene, and two were taken to a hospital. A search was continuing through the night for the fifth person who was aboard, the authorities said.
They did not released the identities of the passengers and crew. The National Transportation Safety Board will investigate the cause of the crash, the fire department said.
The helicopter was an Airbus H135, the Coast Guard command center in the Los Angeles and Long Beach sector said in a statement. It is a twin-engine aircraft commonly used for medical flights.
The helicopter crashed about a couple hundred yards off the shore of the beach, Tyler Robertson, a Coast Guard spokesman, said by telephone. The sheriff’s department and fire department sent divers to the scene and an underwater remotely operated vehicle was deployed during the search. The wreckage was approximately 250 feet deep.
The Coast Guard said it deployed a helicopter and response boat to the site of the crash, while the fire department coordinated the launch of paramedics and other emergency crews as well as aircraft.
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