Helicopter goes bad!

A CRASHED helicopter explodes in a fireball,

yards from a village classroom. The pilot miraculously cheated death as he and three people on the ground escaped with minor injuries.

Minutes earlier 11-year-olds using the hotel’s ground floor while their secondary school is refurbished finished lessons. School caretaker Brian Emmet told how the pilot scrambled clear of the wreck seconds before the overturned chopper erupted in an inferno.

He said: “He seemed to be all right so I ran to help a woman in a parked car. “She had blood on her but didn’t want to leave.”

The caretaker – warned by pilot Bill Curry that fuel was cascading everywhere – yelled at the woman, who had a baby with her: “Go! It’s going to blow.” The helicopter had been making a short hop from the nearby beach at Bettystown, Co Meath, after dropping off Irish businessman Seamus Belton.

He was heading into the hotel as the copter clipped the roof. Mr Belton said: “The blades crashed through the glass. He landed sideways. How he got out is a miracle.”

Rotor blades were hurled across the main street, smashing windows. John Shepard, out shopping with his two children, said: “He kept hitting lamp-posts, broke a propeller – and that was that.”