Three people were reportedly killed Thursday afternoon at the Frederick, Maryland, airport when an airplane and a helicopter collided close to the runway. The airplane was a Cirrus SR22, according to WJZ-TV, and news photographs show firefighters with a deployed parachute from the aircraft. Two men aboard the Cirrus were taken to a Hagerstown, Maryland, hospital where they were treated and released. The three men who died were on the helicopter, a Robinson R44 that was on a training flight
Gilbert Porter, 75, a passenger on the Cirrus told the Washington Post that pilot Scott Graeves, 55, were getting ready to land at Frederick when they felt the collision. Graeves deployed the chute and the aircraft settled in a copse of trees.”I’m very lucky to be alive. What saved our lives was that parachute,” Porter told the Post. Both Porter and Graeves live near the airport and were returning from a day trip to Tennessee when the collision occurred about 3:40 p.m. The occupants of the helicopter were all found near its wreckage. They’ve been Identified asChristopher D. Parsons, 29, of Westminster, Md.; William Jenkins, 47, of Morrison, Colo.; and Breandan J. MacFawn, 35, of Cumberland, Md. It wasn’t immediately known who was flying.
