Four people, including the pilot, have been killed after a privately owned helicopter crashed near the town of Sainte-Brigitte-de-Laval in Quebec, Canada.
The helicopter had taken off from Montreal and came down at around 2.30pm local time on Saturday, 26 September, in the area of Rang des Écossais, near a highway. All four people on board died in the crash, according to local police.
Sergeant Andrée-Annie Bilodeau of the Sainte-Brigitte-de-Laval police told the BBC that the helicopter was carrying four people, including the pilot. She said there were no survivors.
The identities of the victims had not been confirmed at the time of the initial police statement. Authorities also said the helicopter was privately owned, although details about its operator, the purpose of the flight and the relationship between those on board were not immediately available.
Police received an emergency call shortly after 2pm on Saturday. Around the same time, a witness reported seeing a helicopter in distress close to the highway in the Rang des Écossais area. The witness also indicated that the aircraft might have caught fire.
Officers were dispatched to the location following the reports. However, by the time they arrived, the helicopter had already been destroyed in the crash. Emergency personnel subsequently confirmed that all four occupants had died.
The circumstances leading to the crash remain unclear. Police have not yet identified a cause, and there was no immediate indication of whether the helicopter experienced a mechanical problem, encountered difficulties during the flight or was affected by other circumstances.
A committee has been established to investigate the incident. Investigators are expected to examine the wreckage and gather information from witnesses as they work to establish what happened before the aircraft went down.
The identification of the victims is also expected to be a key part of the authorities’ next steps, with further information likely to be released once relatives have been notified.
The crash adds to a series of aviation incidents in which investigators must reconstruct the final moments of a flight from physical evidence, witness accounts and available flight information. In this case, however, the precise sequence of events remains unknown pending the investigation.
Authorities have yet to provide further details about the helicopter’s flight or the identities of those who died.
