Bird strike likely caused New York City helicopter crash in Hudson River: NTSB
Police and firefighters work on the site after a helicopter crashed in the Hudson River on April 10, 2025, in Jersey City, New Jersey. All six people on board were killed when a helicopter plunged into the Hudson River off of Lower Manhattan. (Photo by Andres Kudacki/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — A bird strike likely caused last year’s tourist helicopter crash in New York City’s Hudson River that killed all six people on board, according to the National Transportation Safety Board.
The more than 2,000 pages of information released by the NTSB is not the final report and does not state the probable cause, but the documents show the chopper slammed into multiple large birds before the crash.
The birds hit the rotor blades and the horizontal stabilizer, according to an analysis by the Smithsonian Institution’s Feather Identification Lab. Samples of “mixed species” of birds were found, including Canada Geese and black-backed Gull. Canadian Geese can sometimes weigh more than 10 pounds each.
Videos showed the rotors flying off the helicopter as it plummeted to the water.
The chopper crashed into the Hudson in April 2025 while carrying a pilot and a family from Spain: Siemens executive Agustin Escobar, his wife Merce Camprubi Montal, and their three children.
One witness told ABC News she watched the helicopter “fall out of the sky” from her apartment window.
“I heard five or six loud noises that sounded almost like gunshots in the sky and saw pieces fall off, then watched it fall into the river,” she said.
U.S. Forest Service Climbing Rangers responded to a rescue involving a 31-year-old female climber who suffered a serious fall while ascending the Left of Heart variation of the Avalanche Gulch route on Mount Shasta. (U.S. Forest Service – Shasta-Trinity National Forest)
(CALIFORNIA) — U.S. Forest Service Rangers rescued a woman over the weekend who was climbing Mt. Shasta in California and fell over 1,500 feet in the snow.
The unidentified 31-year-old woman was part of a group of three novice climbers who were ascending the Left of Heart variation of the Avalanche Gulch route on Mount Shasta on Sunday, according to the U.S. Forest Service.
Around noon that day, the rangers got a call about the woman falling approximately 1,500 vertical feet before coming to rest on the mountain, according to the Forest Service.
Weather conditions prevented a helicopter rescue so three rangers ascended on foot, the Forest Service said.
They were assisted by one member of the climbing party who had descended to help carry rescue equipment, according to the Forest Service. Another climber who happened to be in the area also stopped to assist the injured climber and remained with the group throughout the rescue, the Forest Service said.
The woman who fell was found safe and in good spirits with a suspected fractured right ankle and other injuries, according to the Forest Service.
The civilian and Forest Service rescuers secured the woman in a SKED rescue litter and lowered her to Lake Helen before a California Highway Patrol helicopter transported her to a hospital, the Forest Service said.
“This incident serves as an important reminder that Mount Shasta is a high-altitude mountaineering environment, not a hike. Even experienced climbers can encounter rapidly changing weather, steep snow and ice, rockfall, and hazardous fall conditions,” the U.S. Forest Service said in a statement.
Luigi Mangione attends a pretrial appearance at Manhattan Criminal Court on Aug. 11, 2026, in New York City. (Steven Hirsch-Pool/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — A judge in New York on Monday gave prosecutors at the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office until Oct. 9 to respond to Luigi Mangione’s motion to dismiss his state murder indictment, effectively meaning that Mangione’s state murder trial — which had been set to begin on Sept. 8 — is adjourned.
Judge Gregory Carro set Dec. 10 as the next possible court date.
Mangione is scheduled to be sentenced in federal court eight days later, on Dec. 18, and faces a maximum sentence of life in prison.
On Friday, Mangione pleaded guilty to both federal stalking counts in his federal case and admitted to shooting UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in December 2024.
“I shot Mr. Thompson in Manhattan and he died,” he said in court, adding, “I knew what I was doing was illegal.”
Immediately following Mangione’s guilty plea, his attorneys filed a motion to dismiss the charges he’s facing in state court under New York’s double jeopardy law.
“New York law does not permit a person to be prosecuted and punished twice for the exact same crime under a statute that governs successive prosecutions,” defense attorney Karen Friedman Agnifilo told reporters Friday.
Mangione pleaded not guilty in his state case and was set to go on trial on charges of murder in the second-degree, criminal possession of a forged instrument in the second-degree, and multiple counts of criminal possession of a weapon in the second-degree, third-degree and fourth-degree.
Jeffrey Epstein is seen in a photo released by the New York State Division of Criminal Justice. (New York State Sex Offender Registry)
(WASHIGTON) — Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime executive secretary Lesley Groff told the House Oversight Committee Tuesday that the convicted sex offender was a “master manipulator” and that she was unaware of his crimes, according to her prepared opening remarks and multiple sources familiar with her closed-door testimony.
Groff appeared as part of the committee’s ongoing inquiry into the federal government’s handling of investigations into Epstein and his alleged co-conspirators, which to date has included interviews with former Attorney General Pam Bondi, Epstein’s longtime personal assistant Sarah Kellen, and a prison guard who was on duty the night Epstein died in his jail cell.
In her prepared opening remarks, Groff said she hoped her testimony would “dispel the false notions” that she “knowingly enabled or conspired with him to commit his evil acts.”
“Nothing could be further from the truth,” Groff said, according to a copy of the remarks shared with ABC News.
Groff said that since Epstein’s arrest in 2019, she has struggled to sleep and eat, been the target of harassment and death threats, and been “shunned” by many of her friends and acquaintances.
Groff, who worked for Epstein in New York for more than 18 years, was once described by her boss as an “extension of my brain.”
She was one of four women listed as potential co-conspirators in Epstein’s controversial non-prosecution agreement in 2007, which she said, “remains her scarlet letter.”
“I am not a conspirator and I never would have agreed to this language,” Groff said in her prepared testimony.
Among her job requirements were scheduling Epstein’s frequent meetings with celebrities, scientists and politicians, booking Epstein’s daily massage appointments when he was in New York, and arranging travel for women linked to Epstein.
Groff said she was told when hired that Epstein’s typical day included a morning muffin, yoga and a massage. She said she made daily massage appointments for Epstein, but “never met any of the masseuses” and never heard from these women or from anyone else that they were minors or that they were sexually abused.
Groff also told lawmakers Tuesday that she never had a romantic or sexual relationship with Epstein and said the message appointments she scheduled for Epstein with young women and girls were with massage therapists, a source said.
Groff could not recall scheduling massages for anyone other than Epstein and former Goldman Sachs chief counsel Kathy Ruemmler at a spa, and said the masseuses were both male and female, sources said. She testified that she would receive the names of the massage therapists from Epstein, and that he instructed her to schedule the massages.
Sources said Groff told lawmakers that she scheduled most of the massages for Epstein’s New York residence. Groff testified that she never witnessed or knew of any sexual abuse.
Groff testified that she never met a single massage therapist in person and believes that Epstein — or Bella Klein, a one-time Epstein associate — would pay them with “petty cash,” sources said. Groff told lawmakers that she would occasionally send cash via couriers, said sources.
Groff said that from the moment she was hired in 2001, Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell “established guardrails” and made it clear that she was replaceable.
She said she was told never to associate with their friends.
“Their business was none of my business,” she said she was told. She recalled that she was once “torched” by Epstein after he found out she had attended a party with one of his contacts, but he stopped short of firing her.
“In hindsight, I wish he had fired me,” she said.
Groff explained that she did not leave her job with Epstein after his arrest in 2006, because Epstein lied to her and “insisted that he had been blackmailed and set up,” she said in her prepared remarks.
“It was a shakedown, he claimed, for money,” she said. “In my mind, that was the reasons that he was treated so leniently by law-enforcement for such a serious crime.”
She described her now-deceased former boss as a “master manipulator and deceiver who separated his legitimate life from his secret life as an abuser” and made sure “those two worlds did not collide.”
“Members of the Committee, my heart breaks for these women. I believe them,” Groff said in concluding her opening remarks. “Words cannot express how badly I feel that I was employed by Mr. Epstein during the time he abused these women. I will live with this horrible feeling for the rest of my life. But what I cannot and should not live with are the false innuendos and accusations that I knowingly aided his evil conduct.”
Last September at a press conference in front of the U.S. Capitol, Epstein survivor Marina Lacerda specifically called out Groff, alleging that Groff had called her so many times to go to Epstein’s place for a massage that she dropped out of high school before the ninth grade.
Lacerda — who was one of the key witnesses that led to Epstein’s 2019 indictment for child sex trafficking — told ABC News in an interview this week that Groff was the conduit to Epstein.
“Anything that had to do with Jeffrey Epstein,” Lacerda told ABC News in an interview, “had to go through Lesley Groff.”
Michael Bachner, a lawyer for Groff, declined comment in advance of her appearance on Capitol Hill. He previously told ABC News that Groff “never knowingly booked travel for anyone under the age of 18, and had no knowledge of the alleged illegal activity whatsoever.”
“Ms. Groff, a parent herself, is incredibly shocked and deeply upset about the alleged wrongdoings of Mr. Epstein,” Bachner said.
After Epstein’s arrest in July 2019, federal prosecutors in New York included Groff in a list of potential co-conspirators and sent her a subpoena. Bachner informed the government, just four days after Epstein’s arrest, that his client “would invoke her Fifth Amendment privilege against compelled self-incrimination” if called to appear before a grand jury.
Prosecutors informed her lawyers that “numerous victims [of Epstein] had indicated that she was responsible for scheduling massages during which they were sexually abused,” and that she should consider cooperating with the investigation, according to DOJ records released in response to the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
Groff, now 59, eventually interviewed with the investigators two years later, telling prosecutors that “making massage appointments was just another appointment she had to make” for Epstein, and said that scheduling massages was “around 1%” of her job.
Groff, who was hired by Epstein in 2001, told the FBI she was immediately struck by Epstein’s lifestyle and the company he kept, describing it as “pretty incredible to see all the people Epstein dealt with in politics, television, et cetera.”
“Groff felt, ‘Wow,'” according to an FBI account of her interview.
Groff was initially paid a salary of $60,000 a year, but saw it doubled to $120,000 by Epstein four years later, DOJ records show.
The New York Times reported in 2005 that Epstein bought Groff a new Mercedes and paid for a nanny to ensure she would keep working for him.
“There is no way that I could lose Lesley to motherhood,” Epstein said of Groff, according to the newspaper’s account.
Banking records included in the DOJ’s Epstein files indicate that Groff also received three payments of $100,000 and one for $110,000 from Epstein companies between 2016 and 2018, though the records do not indicate the reasons for the payments.
When Epstein was arrested a second time in 2019, she resigned, her lawyer told prosecutors.
“She felt betrayed and disgusted once the indictment came out,” Bachner wrote.
According to documents released by the Justice Department in response to the passage of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, one victim — who was a minor at the time of her alleged abuse — told the FBI that she felt Groff “knew that the massage appointments were sexual” and “felt it was pretty obvious Lesley knew what was going on,” according to the DOJ records.
Federal prosecutors in 2021 informed Groff that she would not be charged, according to a statement from her attorneys.
“After a more than two-year investigation by the Department of Justice into Jeffrey Epstein’s conduct, which included lengthy interviews of witnesses and a thorough review of relevant communications, we have been informed that no criminal charges will be brought against Lesley Groff,” the statement said.
Lacerda said she hopes the congressional investigators press Groff for answers.
“I just think that she should be honest about it so that we can have some accountability here,” she said.
House Oversight Chairman James Comer said on his way in Tuesday morning that he believed Groff has “information that is very valuable to our investigation.”
“Hopefully, we’ll learn more today,” Comer said.
The chairman reiterated that the committee is conducting “the most thorough investigation ever of Epstein.”
“We’re bringing in the most important people in the whole Epstein criminal enterprise that are still alive, and hopefully we’ll get the truth to the American people. If there’s an opportunity for accountability, we sure want to see that happen,” he said.
Groff did not speak to reporters upon her arrival.
