Billionaire, daughter killed in helicopter crash
Coal magnate Cline, a North Palm Beach mansion owner, among those traveling to Fort Lauderdale
Just weeks before their lives were cut short in a helicopter crash, they flashed bright smiles in their college graduation caps.
Details emerged Friday about the crash that killed seven people traveling from the Bahamas to Fort Lauderdale, including a pair who became “best of friends” growing up in Palm Beach County.
Kameron Cline, 22, and Brittney Searson, 21, attended Palm Beach County’s The Benjamin School together, joined the same sorority in college and both graduated in May from Louisiana State University.
“They had been best of friends since they were 10 years old,” said Natasha Diemer, a spokeswoman for the Searson family.
Kameron Cline is the daughter of Chris Cline, a billionaire coal magnate who owned an oceanfront mansion near North Palm Beach. He was also on the Agusta AW139 helicopter that crashed on Thursday, his lawyer’s office confirmed. He died a day before this 61st birthday.
Steven Anderson, a social studies teacher at The Benjamin School, said in a statement that Kameron Cline and Searson were excellent students who “lit up the room.”
Jillian Clark, also a member of LSU’s Phi Mu sorority, was among those killed, said Hara Henshell, a spokeswoman for the sorority.
“Our sympathies are with their families, friends and Phi Mu chapter sisters,” she said.
In a statement released Friday, LSU President F. King Alexander said, “The LSU community is mourning the loss of three recent graduates, along with all of those who lost their lives in this tragic accident. Kameron, Jillian and Brittney were all May 2019 graduates and had such bright futures ahead of them. Our deepest sympathies go out to the family and friends of everyone affected. This is a sad day for all of us.”
West Virginia media identified two other people on board as Delaney Wykle and David Jude, an avid golfer and Chris Cline’s pilot.
Wykle’s father, Paul Wykle, told the Palm Beach Post that she had just earned a nursing degree from West Virginia University and might have been on the helicopter to help someone who was ill.
Bahamian authorities worked Friday to determine what caused the crash. The helicopter went down off Big Grand Cay, a group of private islands Cline owned.
Bahamas Police Supt. Shanta Knowles told The Associated Press that they began searching when police received a report from Florida that Cline’s helicopter failed to arrive in Fort Lauderdale as expected on Thursday.
The bodies of the four women and three men were recovered and taken to the capital in Nassau to be officially identified, Knowles said. The helicopter was still in the water, and based on preliminary information, she did not believe there had been a distress call before it went down.
West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice and other elected leaders paid tribute to Cline, calling him a “wonderful, loving, and giving man.”
“Chris Cline built an empire and on every occasion was always there to give,” he wrote on Twitter.
Along with his West Virginia roots, Cline owned a home in the enclave of Seminole Landing. The community is located northeast of PGA Boulevard in Palm Beach County.
Cline had a net worth of $1.8 billion, according to Forbes.
He lived a life of luxury in South Florida, according to a Bloomberg Markets profile that dubbed him the “New King Coal.” He owned a 34,400-squarefoot oceanfront mansion, along with a $30 million yacht called “Mine Games” complete with a two-person submarine and helicopter landing pad.
Chris Cline launched his career in the coal industry in 1980 at the age of 22, according to a biography on his firm’s website. He began working as an underground coal miner in southern West Virginia and rose through the ranks, founding the energy development firm, the Cline Group, in 1990.
He formed Foresight Energy LLC in 2006 to operate mines in Illinois and then later sold his controlling stake.
Cline donated heavily to President Donald Trump and other Republicans, The Associated Press reported. Federal records show he gave the president’s inaugural committee $1 million in 2017 and spread thousands more to conservative groups as well as committees representing prominent Republicans such as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.
Cline also donated generously to his alma mater, Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia.
University president Jerome A. Gilbert referred to him as a “son of Marshall” on Twitter Thursday night.
“Chris’s generosity to our research and athletics programs has made a mark on Marshall University,” he wrote. “I am praying for his family.”
Information from The Associated Press was used in this article.