Leicester City soccer club owner Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha was on board a helicopter that crashed outside the club’s stadium, the BBC reported on Sunday, quoting a source close to his family.
The helicopter crashed in a ball of flames in the club’s car park on Saturday after a Premier League match.
Officials from the club and Vichai’s company, duty-free giant King Power International, declined to comment on whether he was in the helicopter when it spiraled out of control and crashed around an hour after the game.
According to eyewitnesses, the helicopter just cleared the top of the stadium before it started to spin. It then plummeted to the ground and burst into flames.
A spokesman for the Midlands club said on Saturday: “We are assisting Leicestershire Police and the emergency services in dealing with a major incident at King Power Stadium.”
ohn Butcher, who was near the stadium at the time of the crash, told the BBC his nephew saw the helicopter spiral out of control apparently due to a faulty rear propeller.
“Within a second it dropped like a stone to the floor…Luckily it did spiral for a little while and everybody sort of ran, sort of scattered. As far as we are aware nobody around the car park was caught up in this problem.”
In Thailand, officials at King Power said they could not yet comment on the crash or say whether Vichai had been aboard.
Vichai is a huge favorite with the fans after he bought the unfancied side from central England in 2010 and they went on to stun the soccer world by winning the league title in 2016.
According to Forbes magazine he is the fifth richest person in Thailand with an estimated net worth of $4.9 billion.
Leicestershire Police said a team from the Department for Transport’s Air Accidents Investigations Branch had taken charge of the investigation into the cause of the crash.
[HuffPost]
Comments
Start Total Christian Certification Course On Udemy
