Not true! the blades do not have to stop in midair, I have been in full no power auto-rotations in a Sikorsky CH-53 from 2500 ft where the pilot never applied power to the engines.
Aircraft attitude and rotor speed make for safe auto-rotations.
From the flight path, I would say they were looking for a safe place to land and chose poorly.
There was an open field with plenty of room to land nearby less than a half a mile away to the west.
Instead, the pilot tried to land at an insection near a water reservoir and impacted a hill there. They turned off a flight path that was pointed at the open field.
During autorotation, you aim for an open area and don’t make mid-flight course corrections because they eat up the rotor speed building to use to cushion the landing when at the last possible moment you pull up on the collective and land.
The engines either “fodded” out or disengaged from the transmission just before they tried to autorotate.
Because they were still able to turn in flight, it does not appear they lost tail rotor control, my educated guess is that they lost power from their engines and were auto-rotating but changed course and lost Main rotor speed because of their maneuvers.
I once said Milo coming to Tallahassee was the most exciting thing to happen there since Ted Bundy came to visit and some football team winning the national championship.
The oddest thing happened just before they went after him, all the media articles the left had normalizing pedophilia disappeared....