Shocked witnesses describe watching the moments a Broward Sheriff Fire Rescue helicopter went down in a fiery fatal crash earlier this week in dramatic new 911 calls from the incident.
The 911 calls released Thursday document the moments before and after the chopper went down in a Pompano Beach neighborhood Monday, killing a crewmember and a woman in her apartment.
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One woman tells a dispatcher she saw the chopper in trouble as she was driving on Interstate 95.
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"There's a helicopter with a full tail on fire, flying over I-95 and Cypress Creek Boulevard," the woman says in the call. "It's a helicopter, looks like a medic helicopter, a red one, the whole back end is on fire and it doesn't look like he's landing anytime soon."
Another woman told a dispatcher she was in her 8th-floor unit of her apartment building when she saw the chopper go down.
"We've just seen a helicopter crash west of the Pompano airport," the woman said. "We just saw it circling, it was smoking and then it, we saw like some fire and it went down."
The woman said smoke quickly enveloped the crash scene.
"We can see a ton of smoke now," she said. "You can see a ton of black smoke coming up."
Three crewmembers were on board the helicopter and were heading to the scene of a vehicle crash when it went down shortly after lifting off from the Pompano Beach Airpark.
Cell phone footage from a witness showed smoke and flames coming from the helicopter before it spun around and quickly fell from the sky. The tail of the chopper appeared to be damaged, on fire and coming apart as it made its downward spiraling descent.
Broward Sheriff Gregory Tony said the helicopter crew experienced a mechanical issue and put out a distress signal as a fire broke out on board shortly after it was in the air.
"It was on fire, it just fell out of the sky and crashed," a man who was on the 10th floor of a nearby apartment building said in one 911 call. "It was a helicopter on fire, it just broke in half in the sky and fell probably about 1,000 feet."
"Oh my gosh," the operator responds.
"It was on fire and it fell out of the sky," the man adds. "Looks like they were going back to Pompano airport and they didn't make it."
Capt. Terryson Jackson, a flight paramedic who was on the helicopter, was killed in the crash. The 50-year-old was a 19-year veteran of the department.
Also killed was 65-year-old Lurean Wheaton, who was in her apartment unit when the helicopter crashed into her building.
"A helicopter just crashed, 300 yards away from me, I believe it was the police helicopter," another man tells a dispatcher in one of the calls. "It's on fire, trees are on fire…I watched it come down. It broke in two pieces, it was on fire in the air."
The helicopter's pilot and another crewmember were able to get to safety after the chopper went down, officials said.
"I'm right beside the Pompano airport and I believe it's the police helicopter that always takes off and lands," the second man told the dispatcher in the call. "Oh my God…it just blew up, something just blew up," "I just heard it, the whole ground shook."
"I'm sorry to your family ma'am," he later tells the dispatcher.
The Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board are investigating the crash.
