A Co Donegal man has said he was lucky to have escaped the helicopter crash which killed two people in the heart of London this week.
Construction site manager Owen Doherty, 26, drives up and down the exact spot where the chopper came crashing to the ground at Vauxhall, south London everyday.
Both the pilot and a pedestrian were killed instantly and more than a dozen people injured when the chopper crashed into a crane in thick fog at 8am on Wednesday morning.
Owen, from Carndonagh, said “We start work at 7.30am and I drive up and down the road where that helicopter crashed everyday.
“If I had have been late I could have been right in the heart of that terrible crash.”
Owen said he saw the helicopter flying low and making a loud noise.
But when he heard a huge bang, he thought there had been a terrorist attack.
“It was the loudest sound I have ever heard and I thought it was a bomb or something. It was terrifying,” he said.
Owen and his co-workers at Galladris Construction Ltd, just a couple f hundred yards from the crash, were immediately evacuated form the scene.
“It was only when I got home that I realised how serious it was. It was a miracle that more people weren’t killed,” he said.
Owen, who has been working in London since last November, said he then rang home to let his family know he was safe.
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