News copters crash in Phoenix; 4 dead

PHOENIX -- Two news helicopters covering a police chase on live television collided and crashed Friday, killing the two people on board each helicopter in a plunge that viewers saw as a jumble of spinning, broken images.

Both helicopters went down in a park in central Phoenix and caught fire. No one on the ground was hurt.

At the time of the collision, six helicopters were in the air covering the chase: five news helicopters and one police helicopter.

Television station KNXV reported that it operated one of the choppers. The other was from KTVK. A pilot and photographer aboard each chopper were killed.

KNXV reporter Craig Smith was reporting live from one of the helicopters as police chased a man driving a construction truck who had fled a traffic stop. The man was driving erratically, hitting several cars and driving on the sidewalk at times.

Police had blown the truck's tires, and the man eventually parked it and carjacked another vehicle.

Just before the picture broke up, Smith said, "Oh geez!"

The station then switched to the studio and briefly showed regular programming before saying the helicopter had crashed.

Police later identified the suspect as Christopher Jones, 23, and said he has a criminal record and was on parole. Jones was later taken into custody by a SWAT team after barricading himself inside a house, said Phoenix police spokesman Sgt. Joel Tranter.

Jones was booked into jail late Friday night on two counts of vehicle theft, four counts of aggravated assault on a police officer and one count of resisting arrest, according to Tranter.

Police Chief Jack Harris suggested he could be charged in connection with the collision.

National Transportation Safety Board investigators were on the scene Friday and more were on their way from out of state, Tranter said.

The two choppers came down on the lawn in front of a boarded-up church at the park. Firefighters swarmed to the area as thick, black smoke rose from the scene.

Rick Gotchie, an air-conditioning contractor, was working nearby when he noticed the helicopters overhead. He said they began circling closer, and one appeared to get too close to the other.

"I kept saying 'Go lower, go lower,' but he didn't," Gotchie said. "It was like a vacuum. They just got sucked into each other, and they both exploded and pieces were flying everywhere." He said he ran to the crash site, but "no one got out."

Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) spokesman Ian Gregor said the pilots of the six helicopters were not talking to air-traffic controllers at the time, which is normal.

"Typically, air-traffic controllers clear helicopters into an area where they can cover a chase like this," Gregor said. "Once they are in the area, the pilots themselves are responsible for keeping themselves separated from other aircraft."

Pilots generally use a dedicated radio frequency to talk to each other and maintain their positions, Gregor said.

"There is a high degree of coordination," Gregor said. "To fly for a TV station you have to have a commercial rating, which means more [flight hours], more training."

Gregor said the FAA has not had major safety problems with news-helicopter operations.

Killed on board the KTVK chopper were pilot Scott Bowerbank and photographer Jim Cox. Smith and photographer Rick Krolak were aboard the KNXV aircraft, the stations reported.

Barbara Cochran, president of the Radio-Television News Directors Association in Washington, D.C., said the group does not track fatalities among news-helicopter pilots, but she could not recall another example of two news helicopters colliding while covering a story.

Associated Press reporters Chris Kahn, Pauline Arrillaga and Terry Tang contributed to this report.