It was almost three in the afternoon on Tuesday, February 6, when the Robinson R44 helicopter piloted by former president Sebastián Piñera took off from José Cox's house, on the shores of Lake Ranco, in the Ilihue sector. The former president wanted to return to his house, located in Bahía Coique, on the other side of the lake, to have lunch with his family. Perhaps that is why, although the rain did not stop and thick clouds obscured the idyllic summer postcard, Sebastián Piñera decided to ignore the warnings of his friends and get on the aircraft. The journey from one house to another, which by car takes about 50 minutes, by air only takes about seven minutes. About 400 meters from the shore, for reasons that are still being investigated, he lost control of the helicopter, which plunged into the water. Three of the crew members who accompanied him, his sister Magdalena Piñera, his friend Ignacio Guerrero and his son Bautista, managed to escape unharmed. Not so the businessman, who went down with the ship.
Although there are still no official versions of what happened inside the helicopter, Karla Rubilar, who was a minister in her government, has revealed details of the accident that would have been provided by the former president's sister, Magdalena Piñera. A story that shows how, in his last minutes, Sebastián Piñera chose to save his companions. “You jump first, because if I jump with you the helicopter is going to fall on you,” he would have told the three crew members before falling into the lake and losing his life.
Another version, given by Fabio Valdés, a friend of the deceased ex-president since he was five, indicates that the ship fell sideways into the water with its passengers and that Piñera did not manage to get out. “The windshield, so to speak, of the helicopter, completely fogged up and he was left blind,” Valdés revealed on radio. Agriculture. And he added: “A hundred meters away from the Cox house he tried to return to land, return to the beach. There, perhaps, due to a bad maneuver or precipitation, I don't know very well, as a result of the circumstances he was experiencing, almost blind, the helicopter fell and fell on its side, towards his side. And he must have received the blow. There, Ignacio Guerrero, who was next to the helicopter that is not attached to the water, opened the doors. He came out, his son came out, and 'Pichita', (Magdalena), Sebastián's sister, barely came out. “They tried to get Sebastián out, but the helicopter was already half-sunken and they couldn't get him out,” was Valdés' story.
His body was rescued by Lago Ranco fire personnel after 4 p.m. that same day and transferred by boat to the Harbor Master's Office. Ricardo González, the Fire Department diver who participated in the dive in Lake Ranco, told the Prosecutor's Office and relatives of the former president that in a matter of minutes they managed to find the body, which was floating outside the aircraft. “The extraction was not complex, since the weather conditions, temperature, water, wind, depth and survey, were favorable for free diving,” González explained to the prosecutor, as detailed. Third.
At the bottom of the lake, he says, Sebastián Piñera's body floated without a seat belt or elements to hold him to the depths. “He was free, without his belt, on the side of the helicopter, 28 meters deep,” he said.
The tests carried out by the Legal Medical Service, after a four-hour autopsy carried out on Tuesday night, confirmed the causes of his death: asphyxiation due to submersion. The information was first delivered to the former president's family and then confirmed by the Los Ríos prosecutor. “As the Prosecutor's Office we are already in a position to inform the community that the medical-legal cause of former President Sebastián Piñera is asphyxiation due to submersion,” said Tatiana Esquivel during the morning.
The versions that during Tuesday afternoon spoke that the former president had suffered a heart attack were discarded. “Forensic or medical-legal expertise does allow us to develop a more probable theory of what the dynamics of this plane crash would have been like. As we pointed out, at this moment in parallel there is a technical team that is dedicated to carrying out all the expert reports that have to do with the helicopter where the accident occurred,” stated the prosecutor.
Once the cause of death has been cleared, it is now the turn of the investigations to determine what caused the helicopter to fail. For this, the regional prosecutor has ordered the opening of an ex officio investigation to clarify the circumstances under which the incident occurred. “Now what is coming are the expert reports related to the helicopter that crashed in Lake Ranco to be able to establish the cause and origin of the accident, obtain complementary information and be able to find out the dynamics of the events,” she said.
The Homicide Brigade and the Criminalistics Laboratory of the Investigative Police, in addition to the Gope de Carabineros, participate in the investigations. “The stories (of the crew members who saved their lives) are data analyzed with technical expertise and allow us to help reconstruct the cause and origin of this accident,” said Esquivel.
The conversation with Boric
Piñera was at his home in Bahía Coique on vacation with his wife Cecilia Morel, his sister Magdalena Piñera and some of his grandchildren. As he usually does every summer, the former president visits his friends who spend the summer in nearby areas, either by boat, car or helicopter, depending on the distance. Days before the fatal accident, he had traveled by helicopter with his friend Ignacio Guerrero, who also accompanied him on the aircraft minutes before his death, and his former minister Rodrigo Pérez Mackenna, to Tantauco Park, a private conservation reserve that Piñera has owned since in 2006 on the island of Chiloé, in the Los Lagos region. A journey in which they had also flown over the Futaleufú area, in continental Chiloé. Likewise, on Monday, February 5, he had visited Camping Futrono by boat to meet with another group of friends, according to La Tercera.
Those who spoke with him during those days say that he was very worried about the consequences of the megafire that occurred over the weekend in the Valparaíso Region. For this reason, he worked in maximum secrecy together with a group of former collaborators and former ministers on a document to make available to the current Government on how to proceed. It is an experience that Piñera and his teams had after having faced the reconstruction process of the 2010 earthquake, in his first government, and then the emergency of the pandemic, in his second term. To that end, on Monday morning he met by videoconference with part of his team to coordinate the delivery of a document to the Boric Administration to support the reconstruction efforts after the tragedy that occurred over the weekend, which already totals 131 people. deceased.
Close sources confirm that on Monday he contacted President Gabriel Boric to make this knowledge available. Another phone call emerged from that conversation. That night the former president received a call from the Minister of Social Development of the current Government, Javiera Toro, who is
in charge of reconstruction after the fires in the Valparaíso region, with whom he spoke for about half an hour to share his experience after the earthquake and offer your help.
Former minister Karla Rubilar, who was part of the team of collaborators who worked on the document, confirmed the existence of a minute to transfer to the current Administration. “The president (Piñera) was asking us to help this Government, legitimately, in a very low profile, he told us 'don't tell it, let it stay below, let's help the president for reconstruction, let's make ourselves available.' He asked us to call the ministers, he asked us to write to him. Why do I tell it? Because that was him,” she revealed.
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