An eyewitness who works construction and watches this helo takeoff and land every day said that the helo made a landing, stayed on the pad for about two minutes, and then started taking off.
He said that the helo didn’t sound right almost from the beginning and the pilot bailed the helo into the lawn on the South side of the Pacfic Science Center, West of the Space Needle.
The helo didn’t quite make the lawn, having been caught by trees that line the sidewalk on both sides of the street. The helo landed on a small blue passenger car and a white pickup truck. One person in the pickup managed to escape. What happened to the occupants of either the small blue car or the helo is unknown publicly, probably awaiting notification.
SFD is rolling the hoses as we speak. The bodies are still on the lawn.
Could have been worse. Pilot did a great job limiting the possible damage. The lawn is essentially the only practical place to ditch the aircraft with the fewest possible casualties. The monorail track lies to the West, the news building is to the South, Space Needle to the East.
It’s early in the day. The crash happened around 7:20 AM Pacific today.
“The monorail track lies to the West, the news building is to the South, Space Needle to the East.”
Actually the entrance to the Space Needle is just to the SW of the crash site while the monorail track is to the NE of it. The Space Needle is to the NW. The lawn it crashed on is the SE side of Seattle Center.
It crashed on the NW side of Broad Street where it intersects with John Street.