The two choppers came down on the grass lawn in front of a boarded up church at Steele Indian School Park.

Police have identified the suspect at the center of the police chase as Christopher Jones, 23, and said he has a criminal record and is on parole.

Jones was booked into jail late Friday night on two counts of vehicle theft, four counts of aggravated assault on a police officer and one count of resisting arrest with other charges expected to be filed later.

Earlier Friday, Phoenix Police Chief Jack Harris suggested that the suspect could "be held responsible for any of the deaths from this tragedy."

Rick Gotchie, working in a nearby building, was watching the beginning of a tragedy he could do nothing to stop.
Two of them began circling closer, Gotchie noticed, and one appeared to get too close to the other.

"I kept saying go lower, go lower, but he didn't," said Gotchie, a Phoenix air conditioning contractor.

In one of the helicopters, ABC15 Pilot Craig Smith saw the driver get out of the first truck.

"This may be the end of this thing," he said on-air. "OK, now it's a foot chase."

Police were trying to stop the motorist from leaving in the second vehicle when Smith's helicopter and Channel 3's collided.

"Oh geez!" was all viewers could hear Smith say as his broadcast broke up in a jumble of spinning, broken images.

Witness Mary Lewis said she was stuck in traffic with her four grandsons and was watching the helicopters, turned to talk to the children, and then saw a fireball in the air when she looked again.

"I looked up and I see this 'boom' and I see one of the helicopters coming down, and I said, 'Oh my God,"' Lewis said.

She said she went to the crash site to help.

"It's nothing there," Lewis said. "Just burned-up stuff."

Barbara Cochran, president of the Radio-Television News Directors Association in Washington, said the group does not track fatalities among helicopter news pilots, but she could not recall another example of two news choppers colliding while covering a story.

"These pilots, they are very professional. They combine the skills of pilots and skills as journalists," she said.

Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Ian Gregor said the pilots of the five news helicopters and one police chopper over the chase were not talking to air traffic controllers at the time, which is normal.

"Typically air traffic controllers clear helicopters into an area where they can cover a chase like this," Gregor said. "Once they are in the area, the pilots themselves are responsible for keeping themselves separated from other aircraft."

Pilots generally use a dedicated radio frequency to talk to each other and maintain their positions, Gregor said.

"There is a high degree of coordination," Gregor said. "To fly for a TV station you have to have a commercial rating, which means more (flight hours), more training."