A military helicopter crash landed in rural Crittenden County at dusk, slightly injuring one of the seven-member crew.
The chopper had been flying low in the Frances area right before it crashed. Witnesses said the chopper had been part of what appeared to be a refueling exercise with a larger fixed-wing plane. Aircraft from the nearby Fort Campbell military base often conduct refueling and other maneuvers over Crittenden County.
Tony Maxfield said this time, he knew something was wrong.
"I was on the phone and heard it," he said. "It started popping and making a noise and I heard it go down."
Maxfield, who lives on Lark Loop off Brown Mine Road, was the first to reach the downed chopper. It went down a few hundred yards behind his house in a field near a fence row. The crew members were fine, he said, other than one man who had deep cut on his leg.
"He's going to need stitches that's for sure, but they'd already treated (the wound)," he said about the crew.
Maxfield said the helicopter was in tact other than the rotors, which were damaged.
"There were pieces of rotor all over the field," he said. "A piece about as long as I am tall was broken off of every rotor.
"They hit pretty hard," he said. "I think the rotors broke off when it hit the ground."
The aircraft skidded a few hundred feet when it crashed landed just before 8:30 p.m., Maxfield estimated.
Crittenden County emergency personnel had converged on the scene by about 9 p.m. They initially had trouble finding the aircraft. The other military plane continued to circle the downed chopper, flying very low over the area and prompting 911 calls from several residents.
The crash occurred on a farm owned by Frances resident Jim Defreitas. He and Maxfield were the first ones to reach the aircraft and notified authorities of its whereabouts.
A military team from Fort Campbell was dispatched to the scene. The military asked local authorities to secure the area until the team arrived.
Pictured is an example of a plane and helicopter refueling; however, this is not the actual aircraft. The actual chopper was a twin-rotor Chinook.
