One person was killed and two were critically injured in a helicopter crash on Tucson's north side this afternoon.
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The LifeNet helicopter was an AS350 Eurocopter. There were three people on board.
The pilot was in contact with the control tower at Tucson International Airport, but there was no indication of a problem, said FAA spokesman Lynn Lunsford.
The aircraft was traveling from Marana to Douglas at the time and was not transporting a patient, he said.
Eyewitness Ricardo Carrasco said the helicopter's rotors stopped working and it started plummeting toward the ground.
He said the pilot managed to steer the chopper away from the house.
Carrasco ran toward the wreckage but was stopped by “a wall of flames.”
He and bystanders helped evacuate people in the neighborhood. There are no reports of injuries to residents or bystanders.
“One of the employees heard a loud boom, but he didn’t know what it was and he went back to working on a car,” said Tyler Edwards, 34, a service advisor at Stuttgart Autohaus, 614 E. Glenn St.
“Two people walked in who said they saw the craft go down. It appeared it had a malfunction and they saw it go down and then there was a lot of black smoke,” said Edwards of the husband and wife who walked into the shop that repairs Volkswagens and Audis.
He said not long after the incident police squad cars, motorcycle officers, paramedics and fire engines began “flying down the street.”
Officers began closing down the street at North First Avenue and East Glenn Street toward the east, Edwards said. Traffic began piling up in the area but motorists remained patient, he said.
A management team from Air Methods, the company that owns the helicopter, is headed to the crash site, said Craig Yale, vice president for corporate development. He said the team will help with the investigation.
Yale would not comment about the crash nor would he provide information about the flight.
Star reporters Carol Ann Alaimo, Carmen Duarte and Becky Pallack contributing.
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