BOXBOROUGH, Mass. (AP) — Police say a woman training to operate a helicopter after cutting its engines could not get the engines to restart and crashed in Massachusetts, killing the instructor and injuring the student pilot Wednesday.
The FAA instructor has been indentified as Michael J. Wheeler, 58, of Watertown, N.Y. Mr. Wheeler, a former U.S. Army helicopter pilot who served in Vietnam, is the son of Corda Wheeler and the late Ralph Wheeler of South New Berlin. He was known to friends locally as “Jamie.”
Boxborough Police Sgt. Warren O’Brien says officers and firefighters responding to the crash scene late Wednesday afternoon found the woman outside the helicopter and Mr. Wheeler trapped and dead inside the aircraft.
