A Northern Virginia doctor crashed his helicopter into a New Hampshire lake on Memorial Day, as horrified bystanders looked on. Amazingly, everyone aboard the helicopter swam to shore, apparently unharmed.
Doctor Glen Tonneson was flying a helicopter over New Hampshire's Lake Winnipesaukee just before noon Monday when he ran into trouble.
"He was coming back to land on the end of his dock, which is his landing platform," eyewitness and local fire department spokesperson David Hamlet said. "Just as he was coming down to land, a wind gust or something came along, put him onto the dock very hard. He actually broke a couple of boards on the dock."
Witnesses say they heard the crash, looked out their windows, and saw the chopper in the water.
Tonneson is the former Director of Radiation Oncology at Inova Fairfax Hospital. He checked his three passengers for injuries, and everyone aboard was fine.
The same can't be said for the chopper; it spent the evening on the bottom of Lake Winnipesaukee. Officials planned to bring in a crane to pull the helicopter out Tuesday.
A cause has not been determined, but it appears winds up to 40 miles per hour might be to blame. "It came up quite rapidly. It had been calm until about half an hour before it happened," Hamlet said.
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Tonneson's neighbors in Virginia were stunned to hear what happened to the amateur pilot. "People who survive horrific things, they must have done something good in their lives," Patty Lentz told News4. "Not too many people do."
