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Helicopter 'Disintegrated' In Front Of Speedboat, Rescuers Say

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By HEATHER ALLEN, Sarasota Herald-Tribune

Published: September 13, 2007

NOKOMIS - As Bob Teague steered the cherry red cigarette boat across the teal waters of the Gulf of Mexico, it seemed like another routine assignment.

In front of the boat, about 7 feet above the water according to Teague's estimation, was a Bell 206L helicopter with two photographers harnessed inside.

Then in an instant, everything changed.

'The front leg of the helicopter hit the water,' said Jennifer Zuknich, 28, a model who was also in the boat Tuesday. 'All we saw was a wall of water.'

The pair ducked down as flying debris smashed the windshield of the boat. Zuknich closed her eyes and braced herself. 'This is it,' she recalled thinking.

When she and Teague opened their eyes, though, they saw debris floating in the Gulf along with the three men who moments earlier were flying above them.

'It disintegrated,' Teague said of the helicopter.

He quickly called 911.

'We have a helicopter crash. People in the water,' he told the dispatcher. 'I gotta go.'

Teague and Zuknich jumped into the water.

A day after two photographers died in the helicopter crash, a federal investigator said he expects to release a preliminary report in four to five days as to what caused the helicopter to fall into the Gulf.

Jose Obregon of the National Transportation and Safety Board said he has a 'pretty good idea' of what happened but said it will take six months to a year to compile a final report on the crash.

'For reasons we don't know, the helicopter made contact with the water,' said Obregon, who is based in Miami. It 'had a catastrophic failure when it went into the water.'

Obregon said there seems to be no indication that something on board caused the copter to go down, but all of the aircraft's systems will be checked now that they have been recovered from the water.

This particular model of helicopter, he said, was not equipped with a flight pattern recorder, otherwise known as a black box.

Divers from the Sarasota County Sheriff's Office and Sarasota Police Department spent the day about a mile off Casey Key recovering debris from the crash. Lt. Chuck Lesaltato said the divers no longer will be needed to recover wreckage.

Pieces of the helicopter that have been recovered were small, and included a piece of a rotor blade about 2 feet long and a seat cushion.

Thomas Newby, 50, of Manhattan Beach, Calif., the chief photographer for Powerboat Magazine, and Mark Copeland, 44, of Raleigh, N.C., an Emmy award-winning video photographer, were killed in the crash. They were filming the boat for the magazine.

The pilot, Mark A. Watters, 44, of Pasadena, Calif., was listed in fair condition Wednesday at Bayfront Medical Center.

After the helicopter crashed, Teague and Zuknich jumped into the water, which was covered by a film of fuel.

Zuknich swam over to Copeland, who was floating face down. While treading water, she flipped him over so he could breathe.

Zuknich, who is a nurse at Sarasota Memorial Hospital, said Copeland was breathing and had a pulse. She could tell he was alive, but said he didn't sound good.

She kept telling Copeland that he would make it and that help would be there soon.

'It felt like forever,' Zuknich said at a news conference Wednesday.

In the distance, she could hear Watters screaming in pain. Both of his legs were broken in the crash, Zuknich said.

Meanwhile, Teague swam out to Newby and tried to start CPR and mouth-to-mouth in the water.

'You just do what you have to do,' Teague said in a phone interview. 'You do it without thinking.'

Zuknich also shrugged off comments from emergency officials who described her efforts as heroic.

'Unfortunately, we didn't have good results,' she said through tears.

Herald-Tribune staff writer Latisha R. Gray contributed to this report.

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