Rescuers pulled two more bodies from the water Thursday, bringing to six the number of people killed when a helicopter flying from an offshore oil rig plunged into a lagoon in Nigeria’s commercial capital, Lagos.
Marine police and fishermen calling for body bags raced to a dock on Thursday and delivered the bodies of one black man and one white man.
Rescue officials confirmed they were the bodies of two people missing in Wednesday’s crash of a Sikorsky S-76C+ belonging to the Houston, Texas-based Bristow Group. The company said in a statement that preliminary information indicated 10 passengers and a crew of two were aboard.
Four bodies were recovered Wednesday, officials said after the helicopter crashed in the afternoon on approach to Lagos’ Murtala Muhammed International Airport, according to Bristow.
Six people are hospitalized with injuries, said spokesman Ibrahim Farinloye of the National Emergency Management Agency.
“I saw smoke and then it fell down into the water. We were rushing and it was sinking. People were shouting for help,” said Adedayo Hassan, a speedboat driver. “They were wearing life jackets but they were trapped in the chopper … which was broken in pieces.”
He and his friends dove in, broke the lever to open a door and then cut survivors out of their seat belts and pull them out feet first.
Hassan said they motored back to shore with the men who “were in shock, they just stayed silent.” The rescuers flagged down a taxi and drove the six to a nearby hospital, he said.
Filed Under: Aerospace + defense