Published Dec. 12 in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Shot fired at Pennsylvania Life Flight copter

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

BELLE VERNON, Pennsylvania — The pilot of Allegheny General Hospital's airborne Life Flight helicopter Saturday afternoon knew as soon as he heard the pop outside the aircraft that something was wrong.

A veteran of Desert Storm, he realized the high-pitched hum of the helicopter had changed an octave and the air was moving in and around the craft differently than it had been a second before.

But "we didn't feel anything," Michael J. McCollum, 43, recalled. "There were no temperature changes, no air pressure changes. The gauges stayed the same."

The next thing McCollum said he expected was for the aircraft's systems to go awry.

McCollum said the copter had been in the air only five minutes. He and two flight nurses, Jo Ann Wolfson, 43, and Vickee Beissel Altman, 49, were returning to their base at Rostraver Airport in Westmoreland County from Washington County, where they had been dispatched to join the search for an elderly man who had been reported missing. Someone on the ground had found the man.

The helicopter never had to touch down, but there was eight miles between it and the airport.

McCollum had just turned the chopper north when an uneventful mission turned into a dangerous one. As he flew at 500 feet over Monessen, at about 1 p.m., someone fired a shot at the helicopter

Although McCollum landed the copter safely at Rostraver Airport, the trip could have ended in disaster. A pilot for 18 years, who flew Navy helicopters over Kuwait, he said it wasn't until he was swinging out over Washington County that a bullet came flying at him.

He said his military training, however, had prepared him for such an eventuality, that experience had taught him to keep flying until you can land.

A post-flight inspection found a hole, about the width of a pencil, in the right side of the MD 900 copter. The bullet did not penetrate the cabin but remained in the upper part of the compartment wall.

The $3.5 million machine was damaged to the tune of $11,000.

Life Flight has served Allegheny General Hospital for 22 years and "nothing of this sort has ever happened before," hospital spokesman Dan Laurent said. He said McCollum has flown for the hospital for five years.

Police believe the shot came from a 30.06-caliber rifle.

State Trooper Diana Grady of the Washington barracks said investigators extracted the slug from the helicopter and sent it to the ballistics lab in Greensburg for testing. She said she did not know when test results would come back.

She said state police in Belle Vernon and the FBI are investigating the incident.

"The only one who knows what happened is the person who did it or a witness who saw something." Grady said.

Copyright © 2000 The Kentucky EMS Connection. All rights reserved. News stories may be copyrighted by another organization. Original material may be reproduced provided source is credited.