Family killed in Hudson River helicopter crash was celebrating daughter’s 9th birthday

NEW YORK CITY - A New York City tourist helicopter appeared to fall apart midair on Thursday afternoon and crash into the Hudson River, killing a family of three children and two adults visiting from Spain. The pilot was also killed.

What they're saying:

Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop, alongside NTSB officials, briefed the public on Friday from New Jersey and identified some of the victims in the crash, including the pilot. 

Fulop stated that he had spoken with executives at Siemens and with someone close to Agustin Escobar, the CEO of the tech company from Spain. He also mentioned that family members would be arriving later in the afternoon.

Victims of helicopter crash

What we know:

The victims of the helicopter crash have been identified as Agustin Escobar, a Siemens executive from Spain, his wife Mercè Camprubí Montal, a global manager at an energy technology company, their 9-year-old daughter, Mercedes Escobar Camprubí, and the pilot, Seanqese Johnson, 36.

Mercedes would have turned 9 on Friday.

Escobar worked for the tech company Siemens for more than 27 years, most recently as global CEO for rail infrastructure at Siemens Mobility, according to his LinkedIn account. Meanwhile, Camprubí Montal worked in Barcelona, for energy technology company Siemens Energy for about seven years, including as its global commercialization manager and as a digitalization manager, according to her LinkedIn account.

Who was the pilot killed?

Seanqese Johnson, 36 was the pilot killed in the crash on Thursday.

Johnson often shared career highlights as a helicopter pilot on social media. In March, he updated his Facebook profile photo to a screengrab showing him at the controls of a helicopter, with Freedom Tower and the Manhattan skyline in the background.

In summer 2023, he announced he was flying a Blackhawk helicopter to help fight wildfires for a Montana-based company.

"Long hours and painstaking work to get to this moment. Thank you for all the love and support from those who’ve helped me get here," he wrote.

• MORE: Tech CEO from Spain among those killed in helicopter crash
• MORE: Helicopter crash kills family of 5 from Spain, pilot

"We are deeply saddened by the tragic helicopter crash in which Agustin Escobar and his family lost their lives. Our heartfelt condolences go out to all their loved ones," Siemens said in a statement early Friday.

What we don't know:

During the briefing, officials confirmed that the preliminary cause of the crash had not yet been determined and emphasized that they would not speculate. 

They also outlined their ongoing efforts to gather perishable evidence from the site to aid in the investigation.

They said the current focus is on collecting perishable evidence from the accident site. Investigators have recovered the rotor but are still searching for the main rotor and the tail rotor. Officials urged anyone who may have seen anything unusual to come forward and share that information.

The portion of the Hudson River where the helicopter went down was about five feet deep and rocky, according to officials.

Police said divers recovered items considered to be "not normal" approximately 75 feet from the shoreline and are keeping them to help paint a better picture of what happened.

Witnesses described seeing the helicopter "falling apart" in midair, with the tail and propeller coming off. There were also reports of the propeller spinning without the aircraft as it fell.

What we don't know:

The identities of the children have not yet been officially released, but New York City Mayor Eric Adams said Friday morning on Good Day New York that their ages were 4, 8 and 10. He also said Friday, April 11, was the 8-year-old's birthday. The pilot has not been identified. 

Photos posted on the helicopter company’s website showed the couple and their children smiling as they boarded just before the flight took off. The nature of the trip remains unclear, and further details are still being investigated. 

Why did the helicopter crash?

Timeline:

According to NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, the aircraft, a Bell 206 flying for New York Helicopters, took off from a Lower Manhattan heliport at 2:59 p.m. It flew along the Manhattan shoreline before losing control near Pier A Park in Hoboken at approximately 3:08 p.m.

"The propeller just exploded and scattered, right," one witness said. "After that, we saw the plane just spiraling down like, going from left to right, like that, and we were like, ‘Oh my God.’"

Witness Bruce Wall described seeing the helicopter "falling apart" midair, with the tail and propeller detaching. The propeller continued spinning as the aircraft plummeted.

• MORE: How helicopter crashed in the Hudson: Blades may have come off

The only evidence at this point in the investigation is eyewitness accounts and bystander video, both of which suggest that the helicopter’s rotor blades – and maybe even the entire assembly – separated mid-flight, with catastrophic consequences.

Kyle Bailey, an aviation analyst, said it was "likely" that the separating rotor blades may have sliced off the aircraft’s tail boom. Such a scenario would have been unrecoverable, expert JP Tristani explained.

"If that articulating head actually separated from the aircraft, the aircraft was doomed. There's no possibility of that aircraft ever having made a normal type of landing. It was going to crash," Tristani said.

He continued: "In this particular case though, when you throw a blade, one blade or the entire head, no, you're just a falling brick. You don't have a chance in hell."

Dig deeper:

According to The New York Times, New York Helicopter Charter has a history of past incidents. 

In 2015, one of its aircraft apparently crashed while hovering just 20 feet off the ground after takeoff in northern New Jersey. 

Two years earlier, another helicopter lost power during a sightseeing tour and was forced to make an emergency landing in the Hudson River near the Upper West Side.

What they're saying:

Michael Roth, CEO of NY Helicopter Tours, expressed his devastation, saying, "It’s devastation, I’m a father and a grandfather and to have children on there, I’m devastated. I’m absolutely devastated. And I haven’t seen anything like that in my 30 years in the helicopter business."

Deadly NYC helicopter accidents over the years

The backstory:

The skies over Manhattan are routinely filled with both planes and helicopters, both private recreational aircraft and commercial and tourist flights. Manhattan has several helipads that whisk business executives and others to destinations throughout the metropolitan area.

• MORE: List: Deadly helicopter accidents in New York City

Over the years, there have been multiple crashes, including a collision between a plane and a tourist helicopter over the Hudson River in 2009 that killed nine people and the 2018 crash of a charter helicopter offering "open door" flights that went down into the East River, killing five people.

A medical transport plane killed seven people when it plummeted into a Philadelphia neighborhood in January. That happened two days after an American Airlines jet and an Army helicopter collided in midair in Washington, D.C. — the deadliest U.S. air disaster in a generation.

The crashes and other close calls have left some people worried about the safety of flying.

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