Pilot, adult daughter, her friend dead after helicopter crashes in Drummondville - Montreal - CBC News
The pilot, his adult daughter and one of her friends are dead after a helicopter crashed and then caught fire Thursday night in a field in Drummondville, Que.
Quebec provincial police also said Friday that three, including the daughter's friend who is also an adult, aren't from Drummondville, which is about 110 kilometres northeast of Montreal.
"When we arrived on the scene, we found that there was a helicopter and there were three people inside," said Quebec provincial police officer Hugo Fournier. "The three people died."
Police said the helicopter is owned by a private company. It had left the Beauce area on its way to the Lanaudière region.
The cause of the crash is under investigation.
Police said emergency services were called to the scene near Saint-Jean-Baptiste Road in the Saint-Joachim-de-Courval area around 9 p.m. ET.
They said accessing the location of the crash made it difficult to get to the helicopter, but a team of investigators finally arrived at the scene.
'There was nothing'
Guy Descoteaux, who lives in the area, was one of the first people to arrive at the site of the crash by snowmobile.
"The flames weren't that high," he said.
"I stopped the snowmobile to see if there were people. I was in shock too because you're not expecting to see a helicopter in your field."
That's when he called his family to help. Claude, his father, helped emergency services reach the helicopter by paving a path through deep snow in the field with his tractor.
Police releasing very few details about victims except to say they are adults & not from Drummondville area. Guy Descôteaux was first on the scene & gave about a dozen rides to firefighters & police. Says impact was so brutal he couldn’t even tell it was a helicopter
pic.twitter.com/bRFrqRYk1D
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"There wasn't much left," said Claude Descoteaux. "The tail of the helicopter was still there but the front was all burnt. There was nothing."
The clear path allowed Descoteaux to provide a dozen lifts to police officers and first responders by snowmobile.
A security perimeter was in place Friday morning and the road was closed off to traffic until further notice.
The Transportation Safety Board deployed investigators to the scene. They arrived around 7:45 a.m.
Fournier said that police will work with the TSB to determine what happened.