A helicopter crashed off the Bahamas on Thursday, killing all seven people on board, a Bahamas official confirmed to CBS News. The aircraft had departed from Grand Cay island and was heading to Fort Lauderdale, said Capt. Delvin Major, the Aviation Safety Inspector and Air Accident Investigator with the Bahamas Civil Aviation Department.
The Associated Press reported all seven people on board were Americans. All the bodies are being transported to Freeport, the main city on Grand Bahama.
Major said they are working with a lot of entities in the investigation.
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West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice tweeted that one of the victims was Chris Cline, who the Register-Herald newspaper in Beckley, West Virginia, described as a “billionaire mining entrepreneur,” ”coal tycoon” and “benefactor to southern West Virginia.”
“Today we lost a WV superstar and I lost a very close friend,” Justice tweeted. “Our families go back to the beginning of the Cline empire – Pioneer Fuel. Chris Cline built an empire and on every occasion was always there to give. What a wonderful, loving, and giving man.”
Justice told the newspaper he could not yet officially identify anyone else who died in the crash.
Justice’s spokesman, Jordan Damron, did not return an email or phone call asking for comment Thursday night to confirm his statements.
Bahamian police did not provide a cause of the crash but said an investigation with civil aviation authorities was underway.
