Two news choppers go down in Phoenix
 

This is the last footage of one of the choppers

Did they crash into each other? :(

I work with a man who was on the air on a radio show and introduced the traffic only to open the channel to the chopper and hear something strange. It was the chopper crashing. 25 years later he's still traumatized to the point of not talking about it, and he talks about everything.

Yes. Heard about this story this afternoon. All for some bullshit news story.

What a country!

Here is the ABC news story, with pic of the choppers falling... :(

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=3423083

I'm sorry, I feel bad for the dead... but this is possibly the stupidest fucking thing I've ever heard.

Agreed.

Disagree, it sounds completely reasonable to me.

That sucks. And the fact that it doesn't happen more often tells me that someone REALLY screwed up here.

Really? Two companies, racing to shoot coverage in order to boost their ratings in order to boost their advertisting revenue, crash into each other, killing each other, and it's the fault of the guy who had stolen a car?

That's how I see it.

Fascinating. So private industry, hurting itself in a quest for personal gain, can blame the crime they were trying to profit off of? Brilliant!!

They were doing their job. The fact that their job suddenly became much more dangerous is because that guy ran from the cops. Therefore, its his fault they died.

What if an old lady has a heart attack watching this on the news - can she cash in too?

One or both of the pilots is at fault, clearly. Your leaps of logic actually frighten me.

It's an aggravating factor in the Obstruct & Delay charge that he'll get, no doubt. But separate criminal liability would be unconstitutional, I'd imagine.

I'm sure that's true, as well. It's not an either/or situation.

Wow. Disagree 100% on that one.

Actually, ratings probably went up due to the breaking news high speed chase. Can the guy cash in on some ad revenue too?

:)

If it weren't for his parents this never would have happened, let's throw them in jail as well.

Man, is that the guy screaming at the end there right before it cuts off. I'm a little bit sick to my stomach right now.

Um, no. Their job is not to grab footage of every stinkin' little event that might grab some ratings. Their job is to let everyone know there is a dangerous guy on the loose and where he is. This is no better than your typical paparazzi who thinks he can do whatever the heck he wants to invade your privacy because it's "his job".

The criminal has NO responsibility for the chopper crashes.

Actually, that is their job, the only reason they have (or in this case had) the job.


No, that would be the police, although absent the media the latter becomes damned difficult.

Let's say this happened during a human interest story; or sporting event? If this happened over a little league championship game being covered, would the league be liable?

I don't know, in this hypothetical is the league breaking the law, and endangering the public?

If you check that ABC story, apparently the pilots are not only flying the helicopters, but also watching the camera feed and giving commentary.

That's insane. The station managers should be brought up on charges. Yeah, all of em. It's called Visual Flight Rules for a reason - you're supposed to be looking outside, not in.

Only a publicity-mad, power-hungry DA eager to curry favor with voters would charge this guy with murder or manslaughter, and fortunately, there are no DA's like that.

Wait a second...

exactly

So if this was two police choppers, it would be those pilots fault? Not the guy they are following (doing their job)?

The reason he could be charged is the news copters were helping out the police at the time due to the police copter not being there yet.

t

A job that is purely voluntary and only by the most extreme stretch a servant of the public.

If they were acting as proxies for the police, then that makes a bit more sense, as they now become public servants working to apprehend him. (It's still a stretch, in my view, because I still have to blame the collision on the negligence of one or both of the pilots -- it's not like it was a single-copter crash caused by weather, or having to do something risky to keep up with the suspect, or the like.)

The fact that they were there doing their job is the responsibility of the guy (moreso when they're public servants, as in the case of two police choppers, than when they're news media). However, I think there needs to be a line drawn between unusually risky behavior required in pursuit (where you could legitimately argue that the criminal knowingly put the pursuers in jeopardy) and "routine" procedures. I'd have a hard time holding a guy criminally responsible for something that appears, on the face of it, to only be a contributory liability (at risk of misusing a legal term of art).

Couldn't it also be argued that police chases in general cause these sort of problems? If the police would have limited their pursuit to 25 mph and the suspect would have eluded them by doing 30mph (through a school zone no less!) these four men would still be alive.

I mean, someone will argue this. They're a complete idiot, but they will do it...

I wonder about these chases if it would make a difference in the chasing police might not be better in simply pursuing less aggressively and more or less observing the suspect, while another part of the department coordinates where may be best to spread a ton of tack strips (or whatever method they would use tho blow his tires, hopefully causing a one car accident, saving the taxpayers money!) ;)

In an age where something the size of a walkman can play bootleg dvd's of The Newlywed Game and give you specific step-by-step on-the-go directions to White Castle, you would think that we could come up with a more effective method of apprehending an idiot in a moving vehicle than "GET HIM!"

I believe the only possibility of criminal liability here is felony murder. That is a murder that occurs during the commission of, or fleeing from, the commission a felony (depending on the jurisdiction - in fact some jurisdictions don't even have felony murder). Usually the offense has to be a serious felony - robbery, arson, kidnapping, etc. It usually is a way of incurring liability for a death even though you did not intend it to happen. You usually see it when one guy in a group of robbers kills someone. Even though it wasn't part of the plan and the other robbers did not do the killing, they still get dinged for murder. Same thing for when a kidnapped person dies accidentally.

Your classic law school hypothetical is a cashier suffering a heart attack when being held up in a robbery or a fireman falling of a fire truck on his way to respond to an arson fire. Those hypotheticals stretch the limits of the felony murder rule and for the most part involve too much of a distant causal connection to involve criminal liability for the death. Two news choppers crashing is even less of a causal connection than those two hypotheticals in my opinion.

Because there is really no direct involvement by the suspect, I don't believe anything like manslaughter or criminal negligence comes into play here.

Whether is it's legally sound or not, holding the guy responsible is logically ridiculous. The pilots are responsible for following safety protocols in these kinds of situations, and do it pretty much every day. The simple fact is that the conditions they were flying under were under their control, and at least one of them screwed up. That's not the car thief's fault.

So if the choppers had collided and happened to crash on top of this guy, killing him, could his family have sued the tv stations claiming negligence on the part of the pilots and tv stations caused their loved one's death?

I'm not a lawyer, and know very little about the law.

But, if I'm not wearing a seatbelt, and a drunk driver hits me, he is still responsible for his behavior and the consequences. In this case the helicopter crash is quite clearly a consequence of this guy going apeshit anti-social. Whether the helicopter pilots were incompetent or not has nothing to do with the moral responsibility he bears.

I mean, I don't think anybody wants to try arguing that if it weren't for this guy, the helicopters still would have crashed. The crash is a consequence of his illegal and dangerous behavior.

Could someone please post the Official results of the crash. I am now curious to see if this will be blamed on Pilot error, or something else.


No way is this guy held responsible for these deaths, or the Paparazzi will be able to start collecting workmens comp from the stars they harass.

I disagree, because usually the stars are just hanging out at the beach or having a sandwich. They're not breaking the law in a way that endangers the public, unless they're Lindsy Lohan or somebody.

You are way off comparing this guy to a drunk driver that runs into you.


If a drunk driver runs off the side of the road and crashes into a tree and then you come driving along and while trying to get a better view of the accident on the other side of the Highway drive your car into the truck in front of you is the drunk driver responsible for your accident?

Come on. Covering stuff like this is a routine part of their job, and it was a choice they (or at least, their news director) made, to cover it. Nobody not connected with the stations forced them to be there. It's not like they were innocent bystanders who happened to caught up in the action, nor did they have a legal duty to be there (as they would have if they were police officers).

It's not a consequence of what the guy did. The exact same thing could have happened if they were covering fire, for example.

Truth is, that depends upon what the applicable state law says. And I haven't yet found any article that spells out exactly what applies in Arizona.

Exactly. Whether they're shooting an image of a car chase or a bunch of school kids playing soccer, it's the same job in the helicopter. They're filming something on the ground.

If the guy in the car had been shooting at the helicopter, that is the only way I can by cronin's belief that he somehow directly caused the crash.

I do not believe he directly caused the crash. I believe the crash happened because of what he did. I don't know how anybody can argue otherwise. I am not making any particular argument for legal culpability - I am arguing that he is morally responsible for the crash.

I believe the TV networks are morally responsible for the crash. They send out their reporters and pilots to film this sort of stuff in order to generate ratings, not to do a civic duty.

That's fine to criticize if you want ... as long as you're willing to forego the rest of the coverage that those evil ratings also generate the revenue to provide.

The moral responsibility lies with either with those who made the choice to put the pilots in that situation (if it was an unduly dangerous situation), or with whichever pilot (possibly both) who did not follow established safety protocols. That's clearly either a manager at the station or the news crews themselves. They did not have to be there.

I definitely have no love for the media, but you make it seem like this is something that happens routinely. It seems like you want to focus on how dirty they are, whereas to me its more striking how completely batshit insane somebody has to be to run from the cops. To me, when you do that, whatever happens is your fault.

Worst. Thread. Ever.