British tourist killed in New York helicopter crash

By Chloe Berman |  Oct 05, 2011 06:00AM GMT

A helicopter carrying four tourists has crashed into the East River in New York City, killing a 40-year-old British woman.

The privately owned Bell 206 aircraft spun out of control after take-off and fell into the river near 34th Street in midtown Manhattan. It is not clear was caused the crash.

Aboard the helicopter were a pilot and four passengers - a husband and wife, both British citizens, the wife's daughter, who is also British and died at the scene, and the daughter's Australian friend.

The 40-year-old victim was recovered by rescue workers and pronounced dead at the scene. The others made it to safety.

The passengers were friends of the pilot's family: Paul and Harriet Nicholson, a British husband and wife who live in Portugal; the wife's daughter, Sonia Marra, also British, who died at the scene; and the daughter's friend Helen Tamaki, an Australian. The daughter and her friend were living in Sydney.

They were meeting up in New York to celebrate the birthdays of Marra and Paul Nicholson, 71. They were sightseeing and had planned to go to Linden, New Jersey, for dinner afterwards, police said.

New York major Bloomberg said the dead woman had been trapped inside the helicopter. US reports named the pilot as Paul Dudley, director of Linden airport in New Jersey, who once piloted a Cessna light plane that made an emergency landing in a Brooklyn park in November 2006 after engine failure.