Helicopter crash puzzles authorities as occupants left scene, won’t talk

The Asotin County Sheriff’s Office is puzzled by a helicopter crash in the Snake River on Saturday night because the occupants left the scene immediately and won’t tell law enforcement how it happened.

So federal agencies with more experience investigating aircraft crashes have taken over.

The Hughes 500 helicopter took off from a helipad in Asotin, Washington, on Saturday, and only made it a few hundred feet before crashing into the river near the Idaho border, Asotin County Undersheriff Jody Brown said.

The sheriff’s office, along with deputies from Nez Perce County, Idaho, responded to the reported crash shortly after 10:30 p.m.

A family member at the Asotin helipad identified two Washington men – Lewis Weiss of Duvall and Alexander Jobe of Sammamish – as the occupants of the helicopter and told deputies they were unharmed, Brown said.

The family member told deputies Jobe and Duvall had seen flashlights and heard people were in trouble on the Idaho side of the river, Brown said. But local law enforcement was not able to verify this.

“Nobody was in trouble that we are aware of, or Nez Perce (County authorities) is aware of, because no calls ever came in,” Brown said.

Earlier this week, an Asotin city police officer pulled over Jobe, who confirmed that he was uninjured, he was the pilot of the helicopter and he was its owner, Brown said.

Jobe referred police to his lawyer for more information.

“Since they won’t talk to us, we don’t really know what the story is,” Brown said. “That raises some red flags for us.”

Jobe, the owner of the helicopter, made arrangements to have the helicopter pulled out of the river Sunday and taken back to the Asotin helipad, Brown said. He did not know if the aircraft was still there as of Wednesday.

The National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration have taken over investigating the crash because Asotin deputies found no evidence a crime was committed.

“We just have them ending up in the river,” Brown said. “We don’t have a whole lot of experience investigating these crashes because that’s not our area of expertise.”

NTSB is investigating the crash as an accident, spokesman Peter Knudson said.

Investigators contacted Jobe and gathered some details about the crash, but a preliminary report regarding the incident won’t be available to the public for up to two weeks, Knudson said.