Mystery Memorial Appears for Copter Dead

A cluster of American flags fluttered in the wind next to a crudely fashioned wooden cross Wednesday at a vacant field in Irvine--the crash site of last March’s midair police helicopter collision that killed three men.

“The (cross) has been there since about two days after the helicopter crash,” said the Rev. Danny Thomas, assistant pastor at the Liberty Baptist Church, 5108 Bonita Canyon Drive, about a mile east of the site near the UC Irvine campus. “The flags come and go along with flowers.”

He said he assumed that family members place the items there. Meg Ketchum, the widow of James David Ketchum, one of the pilots killed in the crash, said she and other relatives visit the site occasionally and place flowers there. But she does not know who planted the flags or cross. Fresh flowers are sometimes at the site when she arrives, she said.

Another wooden cross was erected at the top of a nearby hill immediately after the crash, Ketchum said, but she does not know the man who put it there.

Widow Lauds Memorial

“I think it’s great,” Ketchum said about the unofficial memorial site. “That’s more his burial ground for me than the cemetery.” The display is built on a public right of way adjacent to property owned by Irvine Co., according to a company spokesman.

The memorial marks where Costa Mesa Police Department pilots John W. Libolt and Ketchum were killed, along with civilian flight instructor Jeffrey Pollard, when their helicopter collided March 10 in the night sky with a Newport Beach police helicopter. Newport Beach officers Myles Elsing and Robert Oakley were injured in the crash.

The helicopters were pursuing a suspected car thief. Vincent William Acosta, 19, of Anaheim, was arrested later that night and faces second-degree murder charges in the crash.

The collision prompted an outpouring of public sympathy.

Hundreds of Letters

“Right after the crash we had hundreds of letters, but I don’t think we have had anything recently,” Costa Mesa Police Capt. Robert E. Moody said.

“There was some of that . . . right after the crash,” he said. “There were some crosses and flowers, but I don’t recall any American flags.”

A woman at the South Coast Community Church, 5120 Bonita Canyon Drive, who asked that her name not be used, said she sees new flowers at the location “maybe once a week or every other week.”

“I’ve driven by there and seen a lady there with light brown hair,” she said. “A couple of days after it happened, I first saw the lady there. I don’t know who it is. The flags have been out there only about a week. There was one (flag at the location) around Memorial Day.”

Liberty Baptist Church’s Thomas said the cross, flags and flowers form a melancholy scene.

“But it always makes me thankful for my life when I drive by on the way home each day,” he said.

Times staff writer Bob Schwartz contributed to this story.