Story ID: 
Another EMS Helicopter Hit by Drunk Driver
By: Mark Huber
Caption: Helicopter was knocked on its side and heavily damaged, as was a nearby fire truck.
Word Count: 188
Another suspected drunk driver has ignored police barracades and plowed into an EMS helicopter picking up a patient, this time early yesterday morning outside Gallup, New Mexico, on Highway 566. Fortunately, the aircraft's engine had been shut down and no one was aboard when Glenn Livingston, 26, rammed his automobile into a 2013 Airbus Helicopters AS350B3.

The helicopter—registered as N855MB to Guardian Flight of South Jordan, Utah, and operated by the Air Medical Resource Group as Gallup Med Flight—was knocked on its side and heavily damaged, as was a nearby fire truck. Livingston was charged with aggravated driving while intoxicated, resisting arrest and other infractions. The makeshift landing zone had been set up to transport a patient injured in a traffic accident nearby. That patient was subsequently transported without further incident.

This accident comes less than seven months after a similar one in Orlando, Florida, in April. The driver in that accident, 20-year-old Cameron Sunderly, registered a blood alcohol content of 0.18—more than twice the legal limit—when it was measured five hours after the crash that damaged the helicopter's fenestron.