Suit Settled in Copter Deaths of 2 Officers : Courts: Engine manufacturer will pay families $8 million. The crash took place in 1991.

The families of two Los Angeles police officers killed in a fiery helicopter crash four years ago have agreed to an $8-million settlement with the aircraft’s engine manufacturer and its Texas-based subsidiary.

During the middle of a trial that was being held in Ft. Worth, Turbomeca S.A. of France and Turbomeca Engine Corp. of Grand Prairie, Tex., last week agreed to the settlement that will be paid to the families of the two policemen, pilot Gary Howe and Charles R. (Randy) Champe.

The two were killed June 13, 1991, when the helicopter they were flying in crashed while they were on patrol.

“It doesn’t quite close the story but it is a significant step,” said Joseph T. Cook, the Orange County lawyer who represented the two families.

The crash occurred in a working-class neighborhood of Southwest Los Angeles after Champe radioed that the helicopter was “going down with an engine failure.”

Seconds later, the helicopter burst into flames in a vacant lot, after Howe apparently took evasive action to avoid hitting nearby Normandie Elementary School.

A man on the ground, Lino Salguero, also was killed in the crash. Turbomeca and the city together paid a settlement of $575,000 to Salguero’s wife and children in 1993.

In the wake of the accident, investigators contended that Turbomeca had shipped a defective spare engine for use by the Police Department’s helicopter fleet. Investigators said that even though Turbomeca had issued a recall bulletin for the defective engine part, that piece of equipment was on an engine sent from Texas less than a year before the crash.

The engine company theorized that the cause of the crash could either have been poor mechanical upkeep of the Aerospatiale 350 B1 helicopter or the pilot flying too low.