Three dead as US chopper crashes on transplant run

Three people died when a helicopter on an urgent mission to retrieve a heart for a transplant patient crashed in the US state of Florida, a local newspaper reported Tuesday. The Florida Times-Union said the helicopter crashed early Monday while on a flight from Jacksonville to Gainesville, where doctors had hoped to obtain the heart. The crash caused the surgery to be delayed.
"The window closed on using that organ," Layne Smith, a spokesman for the Mayo Clinic, where the surgery was to be performed, was quoted as saying.
The dead included Mayo cardiac surgeon Luis Bonilla, procurement technician David Hines and the unidentified contract pilot, the newspaper reported.
The paper said the cause of the crash was not yet known, and local officials could not immediately be reached for comment.