Medical Helicopter Crashes on Sacramento Highway, 3 Critically Injured

Less Than a Minute

The REACH Air Medical helicopter had just dropped off a patient at UC Davis Medical Center and was lifting off again, empty, heading for Redding by way of McClellan Airfield. It cleared the rooftop heliport a little after 7 p.m. on 6 October 2025. Less than a minute later, it was on fire in the eastbound lanes of Highway 50.

Three people were aboard: pilot Chad Millward, 60, a retired California Highway Patrol officer; flight paramedic Margaret "DeDe" Davis, 66, a Marine and Navy veteran; and flight nurse Susan "Suzie" Smith, 67. No patient was on board — the crew was simply returning to base.

Power Out, Autorotating Toward the Freeway

The aircraft, an Airbus Helicopters EC130 T-2, had climbed to roughly 500 feet when Davis noticed the power had gone out entirely. She made the mayday call herself, over the company's Flight Guard frequency, as the helicopter began autorotating — descending under the rotor's own unpowered spin, the standard emergency procedure for a total loss of engine power, which trades a controlled but rapid descent for the alternative of no control at all.

There was nowhere good to put it down. The helicopter had lifted off directly into a dense stretch of East Sacramento, and the autorotation carried it toward Highway 50, a major freeway running close to the hospital. Data recovered from the aircraft showed the final eleven seconds of flight: the rapid descent from 500 feet, ending when the EC130 came down on its left side in the eastbound lanes, about 1,600 feet — roughly a quarter mile — from where it had taken off less than a minute before. A main rotor blade struck a residential fence on the way down; a piece of it was later found embedded in the roof of a nearby detached garage.

Fifteen People and a Wing

The crash closed the eastbound lanes of one of Sacramento's busiest freeways, but it happened without a post-crash fire — the wreckage came to rest largely intact, though heavily damaged, with no flames despite the violence of the impact. One of the three crew members ended up trapped beneath part of the aircraft. Motorists who had witnessed the crash didn't wait for instructions — they got out of their cars and started helping firefighters lift the wreckage enough to free her. It took, by the fire department's later estimate, about fifteen people working together to move the aircraft far enough to get her out.

What the Highway Didn't Take

All three crew members were taken to UC Davis Medical Center — the hospital they'd just left minutes earlier — in critical condition. In the days that followed, two of them began to stabilize. Margaret Davis was eventually discharged and transferred to an inpatient rehabilitation facility closer to home near Redding. Chad Millward remained in intensive care longer but was reported in stable condition.

Susan Smith didn't recover. She died from her injuries roughly a week after the crash — multiple broken ribs, pelvis and leg fractures, and swelling on her brain that her family had described, in the days before her death, as the most serious of her injuries. Her body was flown home to Northern California, landing in Red Bluff before a ground procession carried her to Palo Cedro, where she'd lived.

An Investigation Still Open

Why Autorotation Exists

A helicopter that loses all engine power isn't simply a falling object — autorotation is a genuine, trainable emergency procedure built directly into helicopter design and every pilot's certification, in which the rotor blades continue spinning under the aircraft's own descending airflow rather than engine power, generating enough lift to allow a controlled, survivable landing if executed correctly.

A Program Built to Fly Into Exactly This Kind of Risk

Air medical transport occupies a uniquely demanding place in aviation — routinely required to launch quickly, at short notice, into whatever conditions exist at the moment a call comes in, over congested urban terrain that offers few good options if something goes wrong shortly after takeoff.