Party Entertainer Loses 2 Fingers to Copter Rotors

A “singing telegram” entertainer leaping out of a helicopter to greet a St. Patrick’s Day party in Malibu lost two fingers of her left hand Friday when she raised her arms to wave while the copter’s rotors were still turning, a sheriff’s deputy said.

The woman, identified as Chanel Price, 31, of Venice, underwent surgery at UCLA Medical Center Friday night. After the freak accident, the pilot of the Hughes model 300 helicopter, Gerald Williams, “threw her back in the aircraft” and took off, landing the craft at a gas station next to a Malibu emergency clinic, said Sheriff’s Deputy Detta Roberts. The clinic later transferred Price to UCLA.

Price had been hired as a “singing telegram messenger” for the private party, Roberts said, and had “stepped out and threw her hands up, and that’s when it happened.”