Parents Describe Blasts in 3 ‘Twilight’ Deaths

Two still-grieving parents who witnessed their youngsters’ deaths on the “Twilight Zone” film set testified Thursday about the massive special-effects explosions that caused a helicopter to fall out of the sky, crashing atop the two children and actor Vic Morrow.

“It got very windy and dust(y). Then I saw the helicopter fall on top of the three people,” said a sobbing Shyan Huei Chen, the mother of Renee Chen, 6. “At that moment I was so scared. . . . I was yelling for my daughter.”

Daniel Lee, the father of 7-year-old Myca Dinh Lee, said he was horrified when he heard the first explosion.

“I fell on the ground because I was so horrified,” he said. “The next thing, I saw people running, pushing, shoving. And I saw the body of my son.”

The two parents, who had been standing at the far end of the film set, also told a Los Angeles Superior Court jury that shortly before the first special-effects explosions were ignited, they recall hearing director John Landis, bullhorn in hand, ordering the helicopter to move “lower, lower.”

Landis and four associates, whose fourth week of trial concluded Thursday, are charged with involuntary manslaughter in the deaths of Morrow and the two youngsters during the 1982 filming of a Vietnam War battle sequence.

After the testimony, Deputy Dist. Atty. Lea Purwin D’Agostino termed the parents’ appearances “one of the most emotional aspects of the case.”

“I don’t know that any human being could possibly listen to a parent testify about being there and not feel something,” she said. “I know how I felt. I cried.”

Defense attorneys, meanwhile, said they also sympathized with the parents but added that the filming, as planned, had been designed safely. The accident occured, they asserted outside the courtroom, when an explosive was accidently ignited too soon, engulfing the rear of the low-flying helicopter in flames before it was safely out of the way. The aircraft, which had been hovering 24 feet in the air, then spun out of control toward Morrow, who was holding the children in his arms while running through a river.

Inside the courtroom, defense attorney Harland Braun, representing associate producer George Folsey Jr., questioned the truthfulness of Lee’s testimony.

Vietnamese immigrant Lee, in testimony outside the jury’s presence, had said that having been “born and raised in a war-torn nation,” he had witnessed many explosions previously.

However, according to Braun, Lee, a 45-year-old clinical psychologist, had told investigators shortly after the tragedy that he had never been involved previously with explosives. Therefore, Braun contended, Lee either lied to the investigators or lied on the stand.

D’Agostino later outside of court termed the assertion “preposterous.”

The parents, who were each paid $500 in cash for the employment of their children, both swore that Landis and Folsey never told them that explosives or helicopters would be used in the vicinity of their children. Neither did the film makers tell them that their children had been hired illegally to work at night without state permits, the parents said.