Pilot Flying Helene Rescue Missions in NC Threatened With Arrest

Seidhom said he asked the official for a specific reason he was ordering him to stop his rescue efforts. “You’re interfering with my operation,” is the reason Seidhom said the fire official gave.

“I’m going back and getting my copilot. He said, ‘If you turn around and go back up the mountain, you’re going to be arrested.’ I said, ‘Well, sir, I’m going back to get my copilot, I don’t know what to tell you.'”

Seidhom said the official called over two law enforcement officers and again threatened him with arrest if he flew back up the mountain.

“At that point, I had to make a decision. I have a victim, I have my son, and I politely asked the officers, told him the situation again, explained everything, told them who I’d been coordinating with, and I said, ‘Hey if I go back up and get this victim and bring him down to this landing spot that other emergency personnel have designated, am I going to be arrested? And the officers’ response was, ‘Man, I really don’t know what to do in this situation.’ I said, ‘So you can’t tell me if I’m going to get arrested or not?’ And he said, ‘Man, I’m not sure what to do.'”

The out-of-state chief and fire captain Seidhom said he encountered at the landing zone spoke with him before he took off.

“They came back over and said, ‘Hey, man, we can’t tell you to go get the victim. We can’t even ask you to go get the victim, but we can tell you if you come back with the victim, we’ll have you a designated landing spot and we’ll make sure they don’t come over here,” Seidhom told WJZY.

“So, at that point, I felt like the other person was going to pressure him to arrest me when I come back with the victim and then my son would have been left on the side of a mountain with this person to go and rescue him,” Seidhom said.

https://thehill.com/homenews/4913942-pilot-helene-north-carolina-rescue-missions-arrest-threat/