JEFF BEZ0S STRANGE COPTER CRASH,
PASSENGER AND PILOT of 2003
Jeff Bezos was in a helicopter crash in 2003 with his executive assistant, Elizabeth Korrell, who was 34 at time of crash.
It seems, from my research and the ages given, that same Elizabeth Korrell, from Seattle died in 2010, at age of 42. Her obit does not mention that she worked at Amazon or with Bezos.
I could find no other person by that name that would fit the description, so I am fairly certain this is same person.
https://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=20030312&slug=amazon12
https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/cincinnati/obituary.aspx?pid=148066592
Another person of interest in the crash is the pilot, Charles Bella, who was involved in a failed prison break in Santa Fe, N.M., according to news reports.
Bezos survives crash of helicopter in Texas
By Monica Soto
Seattle Times technology reporter
Amazon.com Chief Executive Jeff Bezos avoided serious injury last week when a helicopter he was riding in crashed on a mountain range in southwest Texas.
None of the passengers was seriously injured. A spokesman for the Seattle-based Internet retailer declined to comment.
Brewster County Sheriff Ronny Dodson, whose department covers 6,125 square miles of southwest Texas, said the accident occurred around 9 a.m. Thursday roughly 16 miles south of Alpine, a small college town.
>The pilot, Charles Bella of El Paso, had flown Bezos, 38; Elizabeth Korrell, 34, of Seattle; and Ty Holland, 55, of Fort Davis, Texas, to a densely wooded area in the Cathedral Mountains to look at property. Dodson said Korrell is Bezos' executive assistant.
When Bella and the passengers took off in the Gazelle chopper, a gust of wind forced the helicopter into a cedar tree. It flipped and landed on its right side in a 2-foot-deep stream.
By the time sheriff's deputies arrived, Bella and Holland already had left to look for help.
Bezos and Korrell were taken to a local hospital and treated for minor head injuries, Dodson said.
Holland suffered a shoulder injury and Bella refused treatment, Dodson said.
A woman who answered Holland's phone last night said he was treated and released from the hospital. She said he would not return calls because "he was advised not to."
Bella, the pilot, has made news before. He was involved in a failed prison break in Santa Fe, N.M., according to news reports.
In July 1988, Bella was hired by an inmate's girlfriend to pilot a helicopter on the pretense of looking for real estate near Santa Fe. She pulled a gun on him and directed him to land in the state penitentiary yard, where three inmates boarded.
U.S. Customs helicopters forced the aircraft down near Albuquerque. Bella was later acquitted on charges that he helped assist in the escape.
Two years later, Bella crashed a helicopter in the Organ Mountains near Las Cruces, N.M., while on a surveying trip. Both he and a passenger were not injured.
Dodson, the Brewster County sheriff, said he wasn't told why Bezos was scouting the area for property.
According to accounts of Bezos' youth, he spent nearly every summer on his grandfather's ranch in Cotulla, south Texas.
"To be honest with you," Dodson said, "I didn't know who he was until one of the paramedics who knows a lot about computers said, 'You know who that is?' "
https://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/crime/amazons-jeff-bezos-helicopter-crash pic