A United States aviation lawyer, Robert Clifford, has revealed the helicopter crash that claimed the lives of notable Nigerian elites —the Group Chief Executive Officer of Access Holdings, Herbert Wigwe and his family in California last Friday, could have been prevented.
Clifford made this revelation in a press statement posted on the company’s website on Wednesday.
Wigwe, his wife Chizoba Doreen, his son Chizi, and a former Group Chairman of the Nigerian Stock Exchange, Abimola Ogunbanjo, had all lost their lives in the deadly helicopter crash, on their way to watch the Super Bowl.
The Airbus Helicopter EC130B4 had crashed at a border town between California and Nevada, on its way to Las Vegas.
Clifford, who is the Founder and Senior Partner of Clifford Law Offices in Chicago, had spoken up amid an ongoing probe into the chopper crash by the US National Transportation Safety Board.
His statement read in part,
“The crash of a helicopter that killed six people including a top Nigerian banker and his family along the California-Nevada border on Saturday night immediately strikes one as a tragedy that may have been prevented given the determined weather conditions at that particular time.”
Clifford had also expressed hopes that the US National Transportation Safety Board would find out if the crash was avoidable or not after its ongoing investigations is concluded.