Lawsuits: Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office ignored safety of doomed helicopter

The morning of July 16, 2022, four first responders with the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office air support unit climbed aboard what lawsuits describe as a death trap.

The three crew members who accompanied the pilot, Undersheriff Larry Koren, may not have noticed the sheriff’s helicopter’s main generator had been removed. They likely weren’t aware of the numerous engine fatigue cracks that doomed the Vietnam-era “Huey” before it plummeted to the ground in northern New Mexico later that day.

Could they have known the sheriff’s office hadn’t analyzed the lab results from an incident months earlier when dangerous chips of metal ended up in Metro 2’s engine oil, forcing an emergency landing? Did they have any idea, as alleged in newly filed court records, that the aircraft should have been grounded because of the risk flying posed?

Grieving family members of deputy Michael Levison, Lt. Fred Beers and firefighter and rescue specialist Capt. Matthew King say the first responders trusted that the sheriff’s office had their backs. Then they lost their lives.

Two wrongful death complaints filed Jan. 31 in state District Court allege details beyond last fall’s report from the National Transportation Safety Board investigation that concluded the crash of the sheriff’s office aircraft was “due to poor maintenance.”

“Metro 2’s crash was not a freak accident, nor did it occur without warning,” states the Levison family’s complaint against the Bernalillo County Commission. “The Defendant knew that the engine failure during flight was virtually certain to cause great bodily harm or death to Metro 2’s crew.”

“No helicopter program operating in good faith and basic regard for the safety of its crew would have ignored all these signs of engine deterioration,” the complaint adds.

A similar complaint filed by the families of King and Beers contends the county deliberately disregarded “critical life-saving information, which if reviewed would have caused the Defendant to ground Metro 2 and thereby save the lives of those who ultimately perished as a result of an entirely preventable air accident.” The complaints were attached to a lawsuit filed last year.

The men were killed after BCSO’s helicopter’s engine suddenly lost power between 500 and 600 feet above the ground — an unsafe flying altitude that prevented a last-ditch autorotation landing, stated the King/Beers complaint. The crew was headed home after delivering water to help douse a fire near Las Vegas, New Mexico.

“It was so hard to do this (legal action) because my husband loved the community, he loved the county,” said Anita Beers in a phone interview last week. “But the county needs to take some accountability. They were heroes, and they’re pretending nothing happened.”

Lawyers for Bernalillo County say the crash was tragic, but have asked a state district judge to dismiss the families’ lawsuits, contending the county has immunity.

The county also contends the families’ claims should be limited to those paid through the state Worker’s Compensation Act.

“The allegation that these heroes were sent to willful death is offensive and unsupported by the facts,” stated a filing by lawyers for the New Mexico Association of Counties, which is representing Bernalillo County. “There are no allegations that anyone objected, protested or in any way warned Defendant (the county) that there was an outsized risk, as opposed to the normal, but significant risk inherent in flying a helicopter on a firefighting mission.”

Koren’s family has an open worker’s compensation claim related to the crash, a county spokeswoman said last week, but hasn’t filed a wrongful death lawsuit. Efforts to reach his immediate family weren’t successful last week.

“What we’ve learned so far is very disturbing as far as how obvious it was that this helicopter was unsafe, and the reasons that it was unsafe and how obvious that would have been to the county,” said Jessica Hernandez, a lawyer representing the Levison family. “But what we now in the lawsuit need to dig into is why… so that we can better understand why this helicopter that was so obviously unsafe was still being used.”

Helicopter’s history

The sheriff’s office paid $92,290 for Metro 2 in a purchase from the Hawaii National Guard, the Levison claim states. The Bell UH-1H was already 30 years old when the BCSO registered it in 2000.

Multiple sheriff’s administrations had grounded the helicopter numerous times in the years that followed. But after Sheriff Manuel Gonzales took office in 2015, the Metropolitan Air Support Unit underwent a significant change in leadership and daily operations. Koren became its sole pilot and was in charge of the program, according to the complaint.

Two years later, BCSO stripped the helicopter of its main generator and input quill, theoretically to allow space for more crew or cargo. That left the helicopter reliant on its “stand by” or “starter” generator, which is meant to be used for the first 30 seconds or so as the helicopter starts up, after which the larger and more powerful main generator was designed to take over, the Levison complaint states.

“There’s no scenario in which the alternate generator should have been the primary source of power for the aircraft,” said Brian Egolf, an attorney representing the Beers and King families. “When looking at this, our expert just can’t believe that this happened.”

The NTSB report noted that BCSO “stuck a note where a working main generator would usually be, which read” INOP (ie: inoperable.) But the aircraft cannot meet Federal Aviation Administration certification standards with such an essential piece of the helicopter removed, the complaint stated.

The custom modification was dangerous and would have a “dramatic impact on the rest of the helicopter, including the gearbox,” yet “defendant behaved with total indifference to the risks it posed,” the Levinson complaint states. The NTSB concluded the starter generator failed due to fatigue before the crash.

“The Defendant had the money for a newer helicopter (and in fact acquired one) but still promoted Metro 2 heavily on social media, and frequently touted its use to the public,” the complaint states. Eventually, the sheriff’s office acquired a second helicopter, promoting the program as important to crime solving and helping in rescues.

In September 2021, a “chip event” occurred that forced Metro 2 to land in Socorro. Chips of metal had broken off from an unknown part of the engine and were moving through the helicopter’s oil system.

This is the type of emergency that cannot be ignored, the complaints state, given the catastrophic harm it can cause.

Undersheriff Koren, a 20-year sheriff’s officer who was also the helicopter’s mechanic, collected an oil sample and small chip for testing, the Levison complaint stated. But the NTSB reported the sheriff’s office never analyzed the results to troubleshoot the problem and ensure the helicopter could safely fly.

Instead, the sheriff’s office responded by repairing the engine chip light so it would turn off, the complaint states.

Months passed without the sheriff’s office making any attempt to get test results, while Metro 2 kept flying, the complaint alleges. Meanwhile, other routine oil sample tests showed the rate of metal accumulation in Metro 2’s engine oil “had increased by 450 percent.”

In the months after the chip event, BCSO apparently decided to reduce flight hours rather than ground the helicopter or conduct further testing. By July 2022, Koren gave public interviews about his interest in using the helicopter for firefighting and in the days before the crash, Metro 2 and its crew assisted with a fire south of La Liendre.

With the subsequent election of John Allen as sheriff in 2022, and the replacement of the destroyed Metro 2, the sheriff’s helicopter crew no longer responds to wildfires and also has implemented new safeguards, a sheriff’s spokeswoman told the Journal last fall.

The crash

The day of the crash, the sheriff’s office sent Metro 2 out for a “PR Event.” It was in the air for over 45 minutes as it flew around the “PR event” and then “went to retrieve kayaks left on the Rio Grande,” the Levison complaint stated.

At 1:48 p.m., the helicopter departed from the Double Eagle II Airport on Albuquerque’s West Side to assist with the East Mesa Fire. The sheriff’s office “falsely claimed that it had only transported crew members on Metro 2 — that is, it denied to federal investigators that it transported the heavy water bucket used for bucket drops in firefighting,” the Levison complaint states. But Metro 2 did in fact have a water bucket and performed bucket drops for hours that day, as documented in other agencies public records, the complaint states.

“On July 16, 2022, Metro 2 was in such an advanced state of disrepair…that the Defendant knew it was unsafe to fly,” the complaint states. “In fact, given the extent of fatigue and overstress damage, Metro 2 was virtually certain to crash during flight, if not on that day, then not long afterward.”

Phillip Levison, a former BCSO deputy, said his younger brother Michael Levison, a field services deputy transferred to the sheriff’s Air Crew less than two months before his death and was looking forward to the new adventure of flying.

“I’m pretty much devastated to hear the new details about something you thought you already had the answers to,” Phillip Levison said of the wrongful death complaint allegations.

Their father, Daniel Levison, stressed that the family “never really got a chance to thank the people of New Mexico for their overwhelming support.”

“That day,” added his daughter Melissa Levison, “the state of New Mexico lost four men, four passionate men who just wanted to serve their community. That’s the end goal, just trying to prevent anything like this from happening again.”

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