MD chopper crash survivor called out to rescuers. The latest from NTSB. Also, video from the 1986 fatal accident that prompted safety changes.

Click the image above to watch a 9NEWS NOW report on the victims of the helicopter crash.

Click here for Sunday’s coverage, including pictures of the crew and more links and information

A police officer following the smell of jet fuel first used his nose and then his ears to find the helicopter crash site where four people died. The officer heard 18-year-old Jordan Wells yell out to him as he approached the wreckage in a wooded area of Walker Mill Regional Park off of Ritchie Road.

In a little more than an hour, Wells had survived a serious car accident and then a helicopter crash.

Jordan Wells transported from the scene. From video shot by Tom Yeatman.

That crash, involving the Maryland State Police helicopter known as Trooper 2, has now grounded the agency’s entire fleet. Officials say they want to know more about what caused the crash before allowing the helicopters to fly again.

Around 11:10 Saturday night, Trooper 2 responded to Waldorf, Maryland. The mission was to transport two car crash victims to Prince George’s Hospital Center’s trauma unit.

According to National Transportation Safety Board member Debbie Hersman, between the time the helicopter left its hanger at Andrews Air Force Base and when it was back in the same area, heading to the hospital, visibility had dropped from about seven miles to four miles. In that same hour, the cloud cover, or ceiling, went from 1300 feet to as low as 200 feet in some spots.

Because of the deteriorating weather conditions, pilot Stephen Bunker asked an air traffic control facility in Warrenton, VA, for an instrument approach to land at Andrews. The Prince George’s County Fire/EMS Department was notified at 11:53 PM to dispatch two ambulances to the hanger to complete the transport of the patients to the hospital.

According to Hersman, FAA recordings indicate the instrument approach had been coordinated and Trooper 2 was handed off to the controller at the Andrews Air Force Base Tower at 11:55 PM. Hersman said about 30-seconds later pilot Bunker reported problems “capturing the glide slope”. The glide slope is the part of the instrument landing system that helps keep the aircraft at the proper altitude during the approach.

The controller responded that everything was green at the tower, indicating the instrument landing system appeared to be operating properly. At that point Bunker asked for the tower to provide verbal instructions to help guide the aircraft to a safe landing.

At 11:57 PM, before that information could be provided, Trooper 2 dropped from the radar screen. The last altitude reported was 700 feet, at a distance of a little more than three miles from the runway.

Hersman said it appears the helicopter first hit a tree at about 80 feet above the ground. The chopper landed on its left side with a tree crashing down on top of the helicopter. There was no evidence of fire and Hersman says there is no indication the helicopter broke up in flight.

The NTSB investigators said, prior to the crash, the aircraft was flying a heading of 191 degrees, which lined it up with runway 19-R at Andrews. Its final resting spot was 265 degrees, or perpendicular to the flight path.

Killed in the crash besides Bunker were Trooper First Class Mickey Lippy, EMT-B Tonya Mallard of the Waldorf Volunteer Fire Department and Ashley Younger, a 17-year-old who was the second victim from the Waldorf car accident.

Mallard, the mother of two, was on one of the ambulances that responded to the 10:45 PM car accident on Smallwood Drive. Mallard had been with the Waldorf Volunteer Fire Department since 2004. When Trooper 2 picked up the two teenaged girls injured in the crash, Mallard volunteered to take the trip to the trauma center to assist in the care of the second patient.

The helicopter that crashed is an American Eurocopter Dauphin II. It was the second oldest of the twelve Dauphins in the Maryland State Police Aviation Command. The agency began acquiring the aircraft in the late 1980s to replace a fleet of Bell Jet Rangers. The Bell Jet Rangers had been involved in fatal crashes in 1972, 1973 and 1986.

Click the image above to see our stories on the 1986 crash of Trooper 3 in Baltimore’s Leakin Park.

It was the January, 1986 accident in Baltimore’s Leakin Park that helped move the state to upgrade its helicopters. Like the crash in Queenstown, MD in October, 1972, the Baltimore accident happened during poor visibility due to heavy fog.

The Dauphin helicopters have state of the art Global Positioning Systems and full instrument flight rule capability. They also have twin gas turbine engines. An engine failure was cited in the September, 1973 fatal accident in Beltsville, MD.

On the surface, there are some similarities between the crash Saturday night and the one in 1986. In both, the helicopters, flying in foggy conditions, disappeared from radar without any distress call from the crew.

In 1986 the pilot of Trooper 3, Cpl. Gregory May, last talked to the tower at BWI airport just after 4:00 AM. May and TFC Carey Poetzman were returning after dropping a Carroll County shooting victim at Baltimore’s trauma center. It wasn’t until two hours later, when the relief crew arrived at the hanger in Frederick, that anyone realized the helicopter had not returned from that flight.

A large search was conducted, centered near the common border of Carroll, Howard and Baltimore Counties. That’s where the aircraft had last been seen on radar. It was until about 1:30 PM, after heavy ground fog burned off, that police officers found Trooper 3 crashed on a hillside 20 miles to the east, in West Baltimore’s Leakin Park. May and Poetzman were dead at the scene.

In Saturday’s crash it didn’t take two hours for anyone to realize the helicopter was missing, but it did take that long to find the aircraft. Despite having a last known position from the radar at Andrews and radio equipment that is supposed to automatically keep SYSCOM informed of the the helicopter’s position, police and firefighters fanned out all around Andrews Air Force Base in the early hours of Sunday morning searching for the helicopter.

Preliminary word is the Prince George’s County Fire/EMS Department became involved in the search around 12:30 AM when state officials contacted the ambulance crews standing by at Trooper 2’s
hanger.

Police officers were finally directed to Walker Mill Regional Park just before 2:00 AM after SYSCOM was able to get GPS coordinates from a cell phone carried by one of the helicopter crew members.