An Army UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter crashed Thursday morning at the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk, Louisiana, killing one soldier and injuring three others aboard the aircraft.
The three injured soldiers are in stable condition, Kim Reischling, a Fort Polk spokeswoman, told Army Times.
The Black Hawk was flying out to recover a soldier with a heat-related injury on the training ranges at the time of the mishap. The aircraft was part of the 1-5 Aviation Battalion, which is a Fort Polk-based unit.
“One of their biggest missions on Fort Polk is to fly medevac and they were on their way to pick up a routine injury out in the training area,” Reischling said. “There are accidents out there, minor ones, soldiers get overheated, soldiers sprain their hands, stuff like that.”
The cause of the mishap is unknown at this time, she added.
“We have personnel from Fort Rucker, the Army Aviation Safety Center, who are in-route here to Fort Polk to begin the investigation,” Reischling said.
Family members of the deceased soldier were notified this morning. The soldier’s identity will be released tomorrow.
The incident comes a few days after an AH-64D Apache attack helicopter in southern Germany hit power lines during a routine training flight outside the village of Linden, north of Frankfurt.
There were no injuries during that incident.
Kyle Rempfer was an editor and reporter who has covered combat operations, criminal cases, foreign military assistance and training accidents. Before entering journalism, Kyle served in U.S. Air Force Special Tactics and deployed in 2014 to Paktika Province, Afghanistan, and Baghdad, Iraq.
