A Navy buddy of doomed helicopter pilot Seankese “Sean” Johnson said he doubts the chopper crashed into the Hudson River Thursday simply because it ran out of gas.
Remi Adeleke, 42, a 13-year Navy SEAL veteran, suspects a “maintenance issue” is at the root of the deadly crash, which claimed the lives of Johnson and a family of five from Spain.
“Even if you ran out of fuel it’s not going to cause your propeller blade to detach and fall off,” Adeleke told the Daily News. “I’m looking forward to see the autopsy on the helo (helicopter) and what that shows.”
“It was super sad what happened,” he added. “It was totally unexpected.”
New York Helicopter CEO Michael Roth told The Telegraph that Johnson radioed before plummeting into the water that he was low on fuel and was heading back to the helipad.
Adeleke told The News that he believes that doesn’t explain the crash.
“He is smart enough not to be like ‘Oh, I’m passed E (empty), lets keep flying around,”” he said. “Maintenance had to be the issue with this helicopter. I’ve flown on many helicopters in my career and a helicopter just doesn’t split apart like that in midair.”
“The fact the entire propeller blade detached from the helo and another part of the helo detached and went down, that’s a maintenance issue,” he added. “Something wasn’t locked down or screwed down.”
The NTSB is still investigating the cause of the crash. NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said Friday the investigation would look at “reports of a large flock of birds in the area shortly before the crash.” On Saturday, the agency reported that the Bell 2-6 L-4 helicopter was on its eighth flight of the day and had no flight recorders equipped.
Spanish tourists Agustin Escobar, the CEO of Rail Infrastructure at Siemens Mobility, his wife Merce Camprubi Montal, and their three young children all died in the crash, as did Johnson, after pieces of the helicopter, including the rotor, appeared to break off in midair.
Adeleke, a writer and actor, met Johnson in 2014 when Johnson was working in Navy tactical support.
“He was like a little brother,” Adeleke said. “He would refer to me as brother and I referred to him as brother as well. We were close.”
The two bonded over shared experience. Adeleke grew up in the Bronx and his dad died young while Johnson grew up in Chicago and didn’t have much contact with his father.
“One thing we discussed was I’m African-American from the Bronx,” Adeleke said. “One percent of Navy SEALS are African-American and I became a SEAL and I’m from the hood and that inspired him. I kind of took him under my wing and became like a father figure and would provide that affirmation to him.”
Johnson worked in executive security after leaving the Navy but had dreams of becoming a pilot, Adeleke said.
“I know he wanted to inspire other young Black men and kids in the inner city to aim high and do something that isn’t expected,” Adeleke said. “Because it wasn’t expected for a kid from Chicago to become a pilot.”
Johnson would text every time he passed a milestone in flight school.
“He was a very genuinely good person. He was like a light in a room. Everybody gravitated towards him, not because he was a charismatic or the life of a party but because he had that aura of a calm, cool, respectable guy,” Adeleke said. “He had a very memorable smile. He was always in a happy mood and he was super giving — like tremendously giving of his time and whatever he had to give.”
Adeleke said he saw a news alert about the helicopter crash but didn’t think much of it at first. Last he knew, Johnson was doing helicopter tours in Las Vegas, he said.
“The New York move was new to me,” he said.
Then he got a message from Johnson’s wife.
“It was a one-paragraph text but it was a long paragraph,” he said. “Two words stuck out to me, ‘Sean’ and ‘passed.’”
Adeleke also was saddened by the death of the tourist family.
“Two generations wiped out,” he said. “My prayers are with the family. The only blessing in it is that they were all together but I would just pray. As a parent that’s just a hard situation to even process.”
Messages of support have been pouring in, from “people who I didn’t know but was with him in flight school or worked with him in Vegas or did executive protection with him,” Adeleke said. “He was just a straight-up good dude, a likable dude. It would be hard for you to find someone who didn’t like him.”
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