A small plane slammed into a Pennsylvania State Police helicopter during a routine training exercise Wednesday evening near Carlisle Airport, killing the plane’s pilot and injuring two state troopers in a crash so violent it shattered the aircraft into pieces.
The collision happened at approximately 7:50 p.m. in central Pennsylvania’s Cumberland Valley, about 120 miles west of Philadelphia. The police Bell 407 helicopter was conducting training near a grassy area at the airport when a Cessna 150 approached from behind and struck it, Fox News reported.
The sole occupant of the Cessna, later identified as Dr. Paul Sokoloski, 57, of Hershey, Pennsylvania, did not survive. The two troopers aboard the helicopter, Corporal Pilot Bryce Corman and Trooper Pilot Jason Mills, were trapped inside the wreckage before managing to escape. Both were transported to a hospital and are expected to recover.
Pennsylvania State Police Acting Commissioner Lt. Col. George Bivens described the collision sequence at a news briefing. The Cessna, he said, changed course without warning just before impact.
“The Cessna plane, for an unknown reason, veered to the right at the last moment, struck the helicopter from the rear, hit the tail rotor and the main rotor, resulting in a violent crash.”
Bivens emphasized that the helicopter crew had no chance to react. As he told reporters, according to the New York Post, “The pilots would not have been able to even see that airplane approaching them.”
The force of the impact destroyed the Cessna. Bivens did not hold back about the wreckage.
“When I say it was a very violent crash, that plane was cut into a lot of pieces.”
The helicopter fared only marginally better. The Washington Examiner reported that the Bell 407 lost its rotor blades and tail boom in the collision. Corman and Mills escaped the downed aircraft by pushing out a window, a detail that underscores just how close the troopers came to a far worse outcome.
Just The News identified the deceased pilot as Dr. Paul Sokoloski, 57, of Hershey, Pennsylvania. He was believed to be the only person aboard the two-seat trainer aircraft. At the time of Bivens’s briefing, next of kin had not yet been notified.
What Sokoloski was doing near Carlisle Airport, whether on a recreational flight, a training run, or some other purpose, remains unknown. Bivens confirmed only that the Cessna veered right “for an unknown reason” before the collision.
Fatal midair collisions involving civilian and government aircraft are rare but not unheard of. Just weeks earlier, an experienced skydiver was killed in a midair collision during a group jump in Washington state, a reminder that crowded airspace and split-second timing can turn routine operations lethal.
Governor Josh Shapiro appeared at the news briefing alongside Bivens and later visited the two injured troopers and their families at the hospital. He acknowledged how close the incident came to claiming more lives.
“Tonight could’ve been much worse. Tonight could’ve been much more tragic for our state police family.”
Shapiro also posted on social media, naming the troopers publicly and offering condolences to the Cessna pilot’s family:
“Lori and I join Pennsylvanians tonight in praying for the family of the Cessna 150 pilot who was killed, as well as Corporal Corman, Trooper Mills, and their loved ones as they begin to recover.”
He went on to praise the first responders and medical personnel who arrived at the scene. “These heroes go to work every day to keep Pennsylvanians safe and save lives,” Shapiro wrote. “They deserve our utmost respect, and we’ll always have their backs.”
The governor’s response was prompt and appropriate. Credit where it’s due, elected officials showing up at a hospital to stand with injured law enforcement is the bare minimum, and Shapiro met it.
The National Transportation Safety Board will lead the investigation into the collision, with the Federal Aviation Administration assisting. The FAA issued a statement confirming the aircraft types and approximate time of the crash. No probable cause has been determined.
Key questions remain unanswered. Was the Cessna operating under visual flight rules? Was its pilot in contact with air traffic control? Did either aircraft carry recording devices that could shed light on the final seconds before impact? None of these details have been disclosed.
The investigation will also need to determine whether the Cessna pilot experienced a medical event, mechanical failure, or some other factor that caused the sudden rightward veer Bivens described. The acting commissioner was careful not to speculate, saying only that the circumstances remain under investigation.
Aviation tragedies involving helicopters have claimed lives across the country in recent months. A Fort Hood Apache helicopter crash killed two soldiers near Salado, Texas, earlier this year, and five Americans died in a helicopter crash in Kenya, incidents that highlight the inherent risks of rotary-wing flight even under routine conditions.
Corman and Mills are members of the Pennsylvania State Police’s aviation unit, described by the New York Post as an elite division. Both were listed as stable after being transported from the crash site. One of the troopers may have been released from the hospital the same night, the Post reported.
The fact that both men survived a collision that obliterated the other aircraft and stripped the helicopter of its rotors speaks to a combination of the Bell 407’s structural design and plain fortune. They were trapped inside the helicopter after it went down before finding a way out through a window.
Their training exercise, routine by every account, turned into a survival scenario in an instant. These are the men and women who fly search-and-rescue missions, pursue suspects from the air, and support ground operations across Pennsylvania. They accept risk as part of the job. They did not sign up to be struck from behind by a civilian aircraft they could not see.
Carlisle Airport is a small facility in Cumberland County, the kind of regional airfield where law enforcement training flights and private pilots share the same airspace. The Cessna 150 is a two-seat trainer, one of the most common light aircraft in American aviation. Under normal circumstances, the two aircraft should have been able to operate near each other without incident.
Something went wrong. The NTSB investigation will take months, possibly longer, to produce a final report. In the meantime, the family of Dr. Sokoloski is grieving, and two state troopers are recovering from injuries sustained while doing exactly what taxpayers pay them to do.
Fatal aviation incidents, from military crashes at Edwards Air Force Base to civilian collisions at regional airports, demand thorough, transparent investigations. The public deserves clear answers about what caused this Cessna to veer into a police helicopter, and whether any systemic gap in airspace management or communication contributed to the outcome.
The Associated Press reported that Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy is among those monitoring the investigation, a sign that federal officials recognize the gravity of the incident.
Corporal Corman and Trooper Mills went up for a training flight and came down in a wreck. They got out alive. The man in the Cessna did not. The least the system owes all of them is a full accounting of why.
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