Atlanta: Tragedy struck an Indian-origin family in the US after their son, Dave Fiji, was killed in a helicopter crash barely hours after his wedding. His newly-wedded wife was also in the helicopter, but escaped with minor injuries.
The crash occurred in Atlanta, Georgia, soon after the wedding on Friday night, according to an Atlanta News First report.
Dave and the pilot of the Robinson R66 helicopter in which he and his newlywed wife, Jesni, were travelling, died when it crashed near their wedding venue in Dawsonville.
Jesni survived the accident and is recuperating at a metro Atlanta hospital, reported Atlanta News First.
Incidentally, Dave himself was a pilot with Delta Air Lines and had apprehensions about the take-off in bad weather.
Nearly 400 guests attended the wedding at The Revere in Dawsonville.
“I was just standing there watching my son and admiring him. He looked so handsome,” the media outlet quoted Dave’s father, George, as saying.
Dave and Jesni boarded the DeKalb-Peachtree Airport-bound helicopter — a flight arranged as a special sendoff for the couple before they spent their first night after their wedding at a downtown Atlanta hotel, soon after the ceremony ended, according to the family.
Eyewitnesses said that the helicopter went down on a 10,000-acre wooden tract owned by the City of Atlanta and maintained by the state of Georgia as a wildlife management area, as reported by The Indian Express.
According to local media, Jesni was trapped in the debris for about six hours before she could be rescued. When she regained her consciousness, she saw her husband resting on her bosom.
“She saw blood on him, and by then his body was completely cold. She’s a nurse, so she knew he was gone,” George said.
The area had been lashed by rain on the night of the wedding and Dave had expressed concerns about the weather being unfavourable for takeoff, George said. As he himself was a first officer for Delta Air Lines, he told the pilot that there is zero visibility — a condition when “we never fly”.
Citing Jesni’s account, George said the pilot had told Dave that they would fly at a higher altitude.
The National Transportation Safety Board, is probing the case. It has not yet commented on what caused the helicopter to go down.
“Without God there would be many questions – why?” George told the media outlet, while recounting the joyous hours that turned gloomy with the groom’s death.
“God granted us a perfect wedding, and within a few hours, everything changed into tragedy. The only place we can find answers and peace is in God,” he added.
