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LONDON - Bodies have been found in the wreckage of a helicopter carrying an honorary vice president of Chelsea football club and three other men which came down on its way back from Tuesday night's Liverpool/Chelsea match.
The downed helicopter was found in Cambridgeshire woodland today morning after it was reported missing from radar screens, police said.
Phillip Carter, chief executive of Nottingham-based vocational training company Carter & Carter, had been aboard the helicopter, which disappeared in the early hours of Wednesday after leaving Liverpool on Tuesday night.
The pilot was Stephen Holdich, joint owner of operating company Atlas Helicopters of Hampshire, a company spokeswoman said.
Carter and his colleagues had been at Anfield where they had seen Chelsea lose against Liverpool in the semi-final of the Champions League.
The cause of the crash is unclear, but there were no obvious signs of a fire or an explosion, police said.
"I can confirm that the wreckage of a helicopter is within the wood and that there are persons on board, and those persons are deceased," Detective Superintendent John Raine of Cambridgeshire Police told reporters.
Air investigators werwere on their way to the crash site, west of Peterborough.
The wife of one of the passengers had alerted police at 1:45 am on Wednesday that the Twin Squirrel helicopter was missing after it failed to arrive at their home in Cambridgeshire.
In 1996, the Vice-Chairman of Chelsea, Matthew Harding, died when a helicopter carrying him and four companions back from a Chelsea game at Bolton plunged into farmland and burst into flames.
- REUTERS
