UPDATE: No survivors in Wednesday night helicopter crash in dense forest north of Macon
There were no survivors in the crash of a helicopter with three people aboard that went down Wednesday night in remote forest east of the Ocmulgee River about 20 miles north of Macon, officials said Friday.
Law enforcement officials had been tight-lipped about the crash for more than a day, but on Friday an investigator from the National Transportation Safety Board briefed reporters on what was known so far about the wreck.
Officials from the Jasper County Sheriff’s Office said early Friday afternoon that the victims’ identities were being withheld until their families could be notified.
The three victims, two pilots and a passenger, were aboard a chartered Robinson R66 chopper that took off from Thomasville in south Georgia near the Florida border about 6:40 p.m. on Wednesday.
It was unclear where the helicopter was headed or whether it had made any stops before crashing in the Oconee National Forest about 8:45 p.m.
The crash site in rural Jasper County’s Gladesville Creek basin lies roughly three miles east of the Ocmulgee River — five miles northeast of Juliette and just south of Ga. Highway 83, which links Forsyth and Monticello.
The aircraft crashed as heavy rain moved through the area. The cause of the wreck remained unknown as investigators have just begun their examinations of a debris field that stretches some 125 feet.
People who live in the vicinity of the crash site near Juliette Road, not far from Enon Baptist Church, reported hearing a low-flying aircraft around the time of the wreck.
It was not known yet if the chopper’s pilots made a distress call. Air-traffic control officials alerted authorities in Jasper County that the helicopter had likely crashed not long after it vanished from radar.
An emergency transmitter on the aircraft helped rescuers zero in on its location in an area described by one official as all but “inaccessible.”
Pings from the victims’ cellphones also helped search teams find the crash site, but it took until about midday Thursday to locate the downed chopper, which was said to have caught fire in what was described as a “high-energy impact.” The victims’ bodies were removed from the wreckage Thursday night.
Officials said the fire, however, was not a large one.
“We were hunting a needle in a haystack for a while,” Sheriff Donnie Pope said of efforts to find the helicopter.
There were unconfirmed reports that the chopper may have been bound for Atlanta. It was on a northerly heading shortly before crashing when it made a sharp right turn to the southeast, according to NTSB investigator Aaron McCarter.
This story was originally published September 17, 2021 at 11:02 AM.