Shooting in Arizona: Two dead in police helicopter crash

Flagstaff (USA) – They wanted to defend human lives and lost their own: In Arizona, two officers died when a police helicopter crashed. They had supported colleagues in a two-hour shootout.

The altercation began on Wednesday evening at around 8:30 p.m. local time. The police had responded to a domestic violence case, Chief Sean Connolly said at a news conference. While officers were talking to the victim in the front yard of the property, the suspect opened fire with a semi-automatic from the back of the house gun the fire on her.

Helicopter provided aerial footage of the shooting

According to Connolly, the suspect jumped “from roof to roof,” repeatedly firing at the police officers as if he were out of his mind. A police helicopter took to the air to provide officers on the ground with aerial footage of the event. The man was finally arrested around 10:20 p.m. He suffered non-life threatening injuries Gunshot wounds and was taken to a hospital.

At about the same time, the Bell 407 police helicopter crashed west of Flagstaff. The inmates died just a few kilometers from the world-famous Route 66 in a sparsely populated area. The cause of the crash is still unclear. “Our city and our state have suffered a profound loss,” Connolly said.

Pilot Robert Skansky was a long-time resident of Kingman, Arizona, city officials said. Skansky was hired in May 2021. He had previously served in the US Marine Corps for ten years. The state trooper killed with him was a paramedic at the same time and had been on duty since 2022.