A British student living near the site of the Washington DC plane crash has spoken of the city’s shock at the tragedy.
Sophia Nesbitt-Jones, a law student from the UK studying at George Washington University, woke up to the news of the crash, to discover it had occurred very close to her accommodation.
The American Airlines plane carried 64 people on board, with the military helicopter manned by three personnel.
Recovery operations are still underway in Washington DC, after a plane from Kansas collided with a military helicopter on Wednesday night into the Potomac River.
The 21-year-old said: “As soon as I turned on the news, it was an instant state of disbelief. To now hear that there were no survivors is devastating and everyone is in such a state of shock. No one knows how to act.”
The victims include top figure skaters from the US and Russia, a young pilot, flight attendants and a lawyer travelling home on her birthday.
Sophia said: “My friend Callie has been a figure skater all her life, and for her to hear some of her fellow skaters being on the plane is just awful, you can’t begin to imagine it.”
The student from Portsmouth was among those who visited Shun’s Point in Potomac Park the morning after the crash, a key vantage point for observing recovery efforts.
She said: “From the minute I woke up, all I could hear was emergency responders driving past, and in the distance, so many helicopters circling over the river.”
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