Police divers recovered the body of a missing mother from a medical helicopter wreck off Catalina Island, raising the death toll to three after a Wednesday-night crash into the Pacific.
Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department divers found the patient Thursday in wreckage about 200 feet under the water off Catalina Island near Los Angeles, authorities said Friday. Two other people had already been pronounced dead at the scene. Two more were pulled from the ocean alive and taken to mainland hospitals.
Five people were aboard the REACH Air Medical Services helicopter when it went down shortly after takeoff. The flight was meant to move a woman from the island to the mainland for care after an allergic reaction. Her 20-year-old son went with her to help translate.
The Associated Press reported that the search covered more than 156 square miles over 23 hours before divers reached the wreck. The Coast Guard described that effort in a statement as the recovery closed out the missing-person hunt.
The crash left families, island residents, and a medical crew reeling. It also put another California helicopter disaster under federal review at a moment when similar accidents had already drawn public attention in the state.
The New York Post reported that rescuers recovered 45-year-old Catalina Hernandez, the patient at the center of the flight. She had been the last person still missing after the wreck.
Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said authorities were not yet releasing victims’ names in the early official briefings. He described the two people who died at the scene as the male pilot and a female nurse. Another medic and a fourth person, a man, were hospitalized, Luna said.
REACH Air Medical Services of Sacramento later confirmed two of its crew members died and a third was recovering in a hospital. The company declined to offer more detail beyond that update and a public statement of grief.
Relatives told ABC7 the mother was being flown for treatment after the allergic reaction and that her son boarded to translate. That family account lined up with the passenger count and the medical purpose of the flight described by officials.
Flight-tracking service Flightradar24 showed the helicopter landed on Catalina shortly after 7 p.m. Wednesday. The hop from an airport in Oceanside had taken 24 minutes.
Los Angeles County Fire Department said emergency crews were called shortly before 8 p.m. First responders pulled four people from the water that night. Two were pronounced dead at the scene. Two were listed in stable condition and brought to hospitals on the mainland.
The aircraft hit the water not far from the island after the short island departure. The cause was not clear. The National Transportation Safety Board opened an investigation and identified the aircraft as a Eurocopter EC-135-P2. An NTSB spokesperson said the helicopter would be moved to a secure facility for evaluation.
A memorial service was held on the island after the crash. Officials and neighbors treated the flight crew as people who had put themselves in harm’s way to move a patient to care.
Los Angeles County Supervisor Janice Hahn called the crash a terrible tragedy and posted a tribute to the people on board.
Hahn said on social media:
"The people who were on board dedicated their careers to saving lives. They are heroes,"
REACH Air Medical Services struck the same note as it addressed families and staff.
The company said:
"In the days ahead, our focus will remain on caring for our people, supporting their families and honoring the lives and service of those we have lost,"
In a separate statement quoted in later coverage, REACH said the entire organization was grieving and described the period as incredibly difficult and emotional for everyone touched by the wreck.
The Catalina wreck did not happen in isolation. It came 11 days after a firefighting helicopter went down in Yosemite National Park, killing two pilots. Two weeks before the Catalina crash, a news helicopter crashed in Los Angeles and killed two people.
None of those earlier cases supplies a cause for this one. They do show a cluster of fatal rotor-wing accidents in California in a short window, each now a matter for investigators, insurers, and the agencies that rely on these aircraft for firefighting, news, and medical transport.
Medical helicopters exist for one reason: move critical patients faster than a boat or ambulance can. Catalina’s isolation makes that tool especially important. When the machine fails, the same isolation turns a short water crossing into a deep-water recovery. Divers working 200 feet down, after covering more than 156 square miles, are the hard proof of that risk.
Authorities had not publicly matched every hospitalized survivor to a full name in the early updates. Luna’s roster described a pilot and nurse among the dead, plus a medic and a man among the injured, while family reporting identified the patient’s son as having been aboard. Officials also held back full name releases for the crew in the first briefings.
The NTSB has not issued a probable cause. Until the Eurocopter is fully examined, the public has the sequence, the passenger purpose, the recovery, and the death toll, not a mechanical finding.
For the families, the operational questions sit beside a simpler fact. A mother left Catalina for emergency care. A son went with her. A pilot and nurse did not come home. A medic and another man are recovering. The ocean gave up the last victim only after a day-long search.
People who fly toward someone else’s emergency deserve a full accounting when the flight ends in the water, and the rest of us should insist on that standard without waiting for the next wreck.
