Victim: ‘I’m watching my family burn’

Survivor of helicopter crash helpless while 5 died in New Mexico accident

RATON, N.M. — Andra Cobb was frantic when she called for help, telling an emergency operator that a helicopter she was riding in with her father, longtime partner and others had crashed in a remote part of New Mexico and that she was watching her “family burn.”

Police released 911 recordings Friday from the crash near the ColoradoNew Mexico line that killed five people, including Zimbabwean opposition leader Roy Bennett and his wife, Heather.

Cobb, 39, was the sole survivor, escaping with broken bones before the helicopter burst into flames. Her father, Paul, the co-pilot, and her longtime partner, Charles Burnett III, a Texas-based investor who owned the ranch where the group of friends was headed, also were killed in the crash Wednesday, along with pilot Jamie Coleman Dodd.

“I’m watching my family burn in a fire,” Andra Cobb screamed on the call. “I don’t know what to do. There’s a big fire. I’m covered in gasoline.”

Zimbabwe mourns

Dodd also was able to call 911 before he died, telling authorities immediately after the crash that there were three victims and three survivors — he, Andra Cobb and Roy Bennett, who was suffering from a head wound as authorities tried to determine their location.

Officials launched a search but said the response was slow because of the rugged terrain and lack of access. Andra Cobb remained on the call for about an hour as she waited for authorities to arrive.

Bennett’s death was met with an outpouring of grief in Zimbabwe. A white man who spoke fluent Shona and drew the wrath of former President Robert Mugabe, Bennett had won a devoted following of black Zimbabweans for advocating political change.

Bennett, treasurer-general of the Morgan Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change opposition party, previously survived a traumatic year in jail and death threats over his work.

He and his wife had traveled to New Mexico to spend their holiday with their friend Burnett, friends and family said. The wealthy businessman was described as a funloving person who enjoyed entertaining, at times extravagantly.

Burnett’s friends Dodd and Cobb were experienced aviators who would not have taken unnecessary risks in the helicopter, according to the investor’s personal lawyer, Martyn Hill. Hill and Cobb’s wife, Martha, said the co-pilot had survived being shot down while flying a helicopter in the Vietnam War.

Cause being probed

The cause of the crash remains under investigation. Despite frigid temperatures, there was no indication of bad weather that night.

Engulfed in flames, the wreckage of the helicopter registered to an aviation company linked to Burnett was eventually found by authorities, who said it had sparked a grass fire.

Dodd, the pilot, said on his call that he had a broken pelvis and was trying to move away from the blaze.

Andra Cobb said the helicopter had been in the air for just three to five minutes after taking off from the airport in the small community of Raton. In the call, she can be heard weeping and telling Bennett to breathe.

“I’m very, very cold,” she tells the 911 operator.