By IANS
Ensenada (Mexico) : Two members of a television news crew have been killed and as many injured in a helicopter crash in the capital of Mexico’s northernmost state of Baja California, Spanish news agency EFE reported Wednesday.
According to state prosecutor Francisco Javier Alcazar Jimenez, the helicopter, carrying the news crew, crashed here Tuesday afternoon when it became tangled in high tension wires overhead and the pilot lost control of the aircraft.
The news crew were to cover the “Baja 1000 Road Race”, in which some 500 teams from all over the world are participating in various categories, including automobiles and motorcycles.
Jimenez said that the landing gears of the aircraft got tangled in the electric cable running between poles near the San Pedro Martir mountains, and pilot Isaac Sarabia lost control. The chopper crashed just a few metres away from galleries where spectators were sitting.
The two TV cameramen on board, Juan Pablo Gonzalez and Israel Romero Reyes, were killed but Sarabia and co-pilot Rodolfo Calvillo survived the crash.
The Baja 1000 race, which began Saturday, runs along a roughly 2,000-km course from Ensenada to Cabo San Lucas, the southernmost point on the Baja California peninsula. The race will conclude Friday.