CEDAR CITY, Utah — The pilot of the tourist helicopter that crashed in the waters off Manhattan last week, killing all six aboard, was a graduate of Southern Utah University.
A Southern Utah spokesperson said 36-year-old Seankese "Sean" Johnson graduated with a commercial helicopter pilot license from the Cedar City school in 2023. Days after the incident, there was an air of unspeakable mourning at the school on Tuesday.
"He achieved that dream," said Remi Adeleke, who said Johnson was more than a friend to him. "He was an E3, which is a lower rank in the military. I was a Navy SEAL. So, you know, we had to be careful. But when I got out, that's when it was more like a brotherhood."
Before attending and graduating from SUU, Johnson grew up in Chicago and was a technician with the Navy Seals. He later repaired helicopters aboard the USS Ronald Reagan and was part of naval operations rendering aid in Japan after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
At the airport hangar that houses the school, instructors and former classmates alike said they were too distraught to talk.
After flying tourist helicopters in Chicago, Johnson moved to New York City two weeks before Thursday's accident in which he was flying a family of five on a sightseeing tour before the helicopter broke apart and fell into the Hudson River.
Agustin Escobar, an executive of Siemens, a German technology company, along with his wife and their three children aged 4, 5 and 11 years old, were identified as the others killed.
Adeleke was about to head on a trip to Africa when he saw a text about the crash.
"I get so many messages that it's easy for me to get a message open it up, read through it, and then forget about it," he said. "I opened up the text, and I saw two words, Sean, and then I saw crash."
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He shared how his friend not only loved to fly but loved to give back and set an example for his family and the south side of Chicago community where he grew up.
"I'm gonna be a pilot. It was like, that's how I'm gonna give back," Adeleke said of his friend's dream. "That's how I'm gonna change the narrative. I'm gonna change the narrative by being a pilot. I'll be the pilot from Chicago, from the hood of Chicago."
New York Helicopter Tours, the company that employed Johnson, announced Sunday it was closing down immediately, according to the Federal Aviation Administration, who had ordered an emergency grounding of its aircraft on Monday.
The National Transportation Safety Board said its investigation into the accident remains in its early stages, and it is still too early to determine what caused the crash. Videos posted online appear to show the helicopter breaking apart and inverting before crashing into the river.
