Winter Garden woman dies in helicopter crash

A 73-year-old woman was among the six victims of a helicopter crash Wednesday, June 22, in West Virginia,

According to West Virginia's chief medical examiner, Carolyn O'Connor, of Winter Garden, died when the Bell UH-1B helicopter in which she was a passenger crashed.

The other victims were John Nagle, 53, of Austin, Texas; Donald Sandhoff, 69, of Durham, West Virginia; Kevin Warren, 51, of Franklin, Tennessee; Marvin Bledsoe, 64, of Chapmanville, West Virginia; and Jack Collins, 65, of Chapmanville, West Virginia.

According to a National Transportation Safety Board report, a team of NTSB aviation safety investigators arrived in Logan, West Virginia, on the afternoon of June 23, to begin the investigation into crash.

The local flight was associated with an annual event called the Huey Reunion in which helicopter rides were offered by the organizer, MARPAT Aviation. The accident flight departed Logan County Airport and crashed at about 4:57 p.m on a rural road about 3.7 miles northeast of the airport. Much of the wreckage was consumed in a post-crash fire.

The flight was the last planned flight of the day. The route for that flight was different from the tour paths that had been flown previously that day.

The helicopter was not equipped, nor was it required to be, with either a cockpit voice recorder or a flight data recorder, NTSB officials said.