SACRAMENTO COUNTY, Calif. — It’s been months since someone stole and crashed a helicopter at the Sacramento Executive Airport, but a recently unsealed search warrant sheds new light on the investigation.
The warrant identifies the suspect as 20-year-old Jaden Edwards and contains details unknown prior to now.
Around 2:30 a.m. on March 15, someone started tampering with four helicopters at the Sacramento Executive Airport.
The warrant says the person was able to start the first helicopter but damaged one of the engines. They could not start the second helicopter; they started the third one, but it had low battery and they successfully started the fourth helicopter.
The warrant describes surveillance footage showing the blades of the fourth helicopter starting to turn around 4:50 a.m. It briefly left the ground before flipping onto its side when an object shot off from it and damaged another aircraft.
Investigators say they found an EBT card with Edwards’ name in the cockpit, and a representative of Capitol Helicopters told them no one with that name was given permission to access or operate the helicopters.
Investigators then went to the Placer County Welfare Center where an individual told Sacramento police to pull footage from the ‘ampm’ convenience store across the street from the airport. The warrant says investigators got the footage and it shows Edwards making a purchase at the store just after 1 a.m. the same day as the crash.
Two days after the helicopter crash, Sacramento County deputies found Edwards in a Cessna airplane and he told them he was trying to start the plane but it was out of fuel.
The warrant ends with an agent requesting permission for a DNA sample from Edwards.
To date, no charges have been filed against him related to the helicopter crash in Sacramento.
