British woman killed in New York ’copter crash

A British women has been killed after a helicopter ditched into the East River off Manhattan, police in New York reported.

The woman was one of five people on board – four passengers and a pilot – when the accident happened just after 3:20pm local time yesterday shortly after the helicopter took off.

Police said two female passengers are in hospital and are in a “critical” condition while two males are described as being “stable.”

It is believed three British tourists were among the passengers.

The city’s mayor Michael Bloomberg said: “We believe two were Brits who lived in Portugal, two lived in Australia, one probably was Australian and one was English, but that’s changed a number of times, and we’re still trying to talk to the families. Apparently four or five people got out of the helicopter on their own.

“It was inverted upside down when some of the people were rescued and some of the passengers who got out were holding on to the skids.”

Rescue workers pulled all four passengers and the pilot from the river.

Eyewitness Dan Sweeney, said the helicopter was headed for a nearby heliport when it crashed into the river just south of the United Nations building.

“It went down pretty fast, you could see the splash, you could see the top of it and it just disappeared,” he said. “It looked like it was trying to land at the heliport and missed the landing.”

A Foreign and Commonwealth Office spokesman said: “We are urgently investigating reports.”