Helicopter Plunges Into East River, Killing a Passenger; 4 People Survive

The rescuers swam out to the capsized helicopter, where two men who had been aboard the single-engine craft were seen clinging to the skids. One of the men swam to the East 34th Street Heliport, where the copter had taken off moments before. It hit the water only 50 yards from shore, close enough to shorten the time the emergency teams needed to reach it.

The pilot and three of the passengers — two women and a man — survived. The passenger who died, Sonia Marra, 40, of Sydney, Australia, was apparently trapped in the helicopter when it sank in about 40 feet of swift-moving water. Divers pulled her body from the back seat of the wreckage some time after the helicopter, a Bell 206 JetRanger, went down around 3:20 p.m.

Paul J. Browne, the chief spokesman for the New York Police Department, said the helicopter had apparently run into trouble after takeoff and was trying to return to the helipad — a narrow stretch of pavement between the river and the elevated Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive. Mr. Browne said he did not know what the problem had been.

Other witnesses said the copter did not get far off the ground. “It lifted up, and it never really looked right,” said Mike Pratley, a limousine driver from Orange, Conn., who was on a pedestrian walkway south of the helipad. “It was out of control.”