A person claiming to be a helicopter pilot made a comment on that reddit thread they thought the aircraft was already at a high yaw before the initial separation. It looked like a small blob of pixels to me, even full screen so I was unsure, except for the identifiable helicopter profile. However there did not appear to be any maneuvering prior to the initiation of the spin. The end events of the removed reddit video was the same as that from the cell phone.
If it comes up again, the video looked to be a fixed camera pretty high up and looking between two buildings. The camera does not pan as the more often shown one does and starts before the breakup.
Would loss of tail rotor control at what looked to me like a fair cruise speed (100 kts?) result in this sort of breakup?
EDIT: reposted at:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Catastrophi...ash_in_hudson/