Pilot Dies as Copter Hits Line, Crashes : Convoy: Marine just back from Persian Gulf escapes injury as his vehicle runs over helicopter wreckage that fell onto freeway.

The pilot of a small helicopter was killed Friday when he flew into high-tension power lines across Interstate 15 near Rainbow and crashed on the freeway--directly in the path of a convoy of Marines returning to Camp Pendleton from the Middle East.

Witnesses said the helicopter had been tracking the nine-vehicle convoy from Norton Air Force Base in San Bernardino, where a contingent of troops assigned to Headquarters Battalion, 1st Marine Division, had arrived by plane from Saudi Arabia a few hours earlier.

A U.S. Border Patrol agent who witnessed the crash said the helicopter flew into the lowest of three high-tension power lines, then broke apart and plummeted onto the slow lanes of southbound I-15.

“It struck the lower strand of three power lines running east to west across the freeway, and it hung there for a few seconds, and then it dropped like a rock,” said agent Matt Van Gorder, 33, who was watching freeway traffic near the Rainbow Valley Bridge.

The downed aircraft was then struck by the lead vehicle in the convoy and pushed about 100 yards, erupting into flames. The startled driver, Marine Cpl. James Martin, 22, jumped from his general purpose utility vehicle, known as a Humvee, and escaped, uninjured.

“He was right in front of me, and I went right over the top of him,” Martin said. “What a way to come home. I dodged a few bullets (in the Persian Gulf), but running over a helicopter doesn’t compare to that.”

The helicopter pilot was identified as Nobuo Nakayama, no age or hometown given. A deputy at the San Diego County medical examiner’s office said an autopsy would be performed on Nakayama today.

Van Gorder said it “was almost a miracle” that none of the fast-moving freeway motorists was hurt by the debris that rained down after the copter hit the power lines.

FAA investigator Swede Gamble said the helicopter was based at a Corona airport. The helicopter was described as an ultralight aircraft identified as a Robinson R-22. Only the pilot was aboard.

According to the medical examiner’s office, Nakayama had rented the helicopter from Hiser Heliplanes in Corona. A Hiser spokesman confirmed that the downed copter belonged to the firm.

A Camp Pendleton spokesman said the Marines in the convoy had landed at Norton Air Force Base about four hours before the crash, which occurred about 10 miles from the base’s Fallbrook entrance.

Martin, the driver involved in the crash, had been in the Persian Gulf since December, the spokesman said, and was scheduled to be released from duty today.

Traffic on southbound I-15 was detoured for most of the day while Federal Aviation Administration authorities and Marine Corps security officers investigated the accident.

Southbound motorists were forced to make a long circuit around Palomar Mountain on California 79 and 76 to avoid the accident site in hilly, rocky terrain just south of the Riverside County line.