Newsday

Helicopter Crashes in New Zealand

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) -- U.S. Ambassador Carol Moseley-Braun rushed to the aid of a pilot who was fatally injured Monday when his helicopter crashed in New Zealand close to where she was standing.

The helicopter had been using a large bucket to move earth from a construction site on the summit of Mount Victoria when its rotor blades clipped the hillside.

Moseley-Braun was on the mountain showing visitors from Chicago the view of the New Zealand capital, Wellington, when the Bell 204 helicopter plunged 60 feet to the ground.

''All of a sudden, there was this noise and debris,'' she told Wellington's Evening Post newspaper. ''It was unthinkable, debris just started flying.''

Moseley-Braun ran to the helicopter with a blanket for the pilot, Andrew Shaw, 52. He died soon after the crash.

Moseley-Braun, an Illinois Democrat, was the first black woman to become a U.S. senator. President Clinton named her to the New Zealand post after she was defeated in her 1998 bid for a second Senate term.

Two other American tourists, Brendan Foley and Kristen Douillard, both from Massachusetts, helped pull the injured pilot from the wreckage; and a Canadian doctor, Julie Teffier, tried to revive him.

Foley said the helicopter landed yards from where he and Douillard were sitting.

''It was just so close,'' he said. ''The debris went right by our heads.''

AP-NY-01-15-01 0426EST< 

-- Rachel Gibson (rgibson@hotmail.com), January 15, 2001