A tour helicopter careened through a crowded Kailua neighborhood before nose-diving onto Oneawa Street shortly after 9 a.m. Monday, igniting on impact and killing all three people on board.

The helicopter spun out of control in the rain and shed parts over several blocks of the neighborhood, scattering metal, plastic and other debris including a cellphone as it plunged to the ground. But no injuries to bystanders were reported.

“I was on my back porch on the phone, and I heard what sounded like a very sick helicopter very near my home,” said Susan Peterson, who lives on Kaiemi Street. “As I stepped out I heard a big pop, and I looked; right then there’s a propeller going one way and a helicopter the other way.”

“I’m all ‘Where do I run?’ because they were still up pretty high,” she said. “But as I’m thinking, ‘Where do I run?’ they just go down, boom.”

The maroon aircraft, a four-seat Robinson R44 operated by Novictor Helicopters, crashed in front of 745 Oneawa St., near Nowela Place.

>> View more photos from the crash site in our gallery.

Sommer Birkett, a beautician, had a clear view of the accident unfolding from her second-floor living room in an alley off Oneawa Street, right where the helicopter went down.

“It sounded like a missile hit a plane,” Birkett said. “I heard this loud sshhhh- boom! I was like, ‘What the hell is that?’ I looked out the window, and I saw the helicopter nose-dive onto Oneawa Street.”

“There were no flames or anything when it fell — that happened after it plummeted,” Birkett said. “Something happened with the helicopter; something went wrong with it where it stopped working.”

“I feel like it was on a movie screen, right in front of my eyes,” she said. “I cannot believe what I saw. It’s unreal.”

Emergency Medical Serv­ices was responding to another call in the area when workers heard a horrific bang, according to Shayne Enright, spokeswoman for the city Department of Emergency Services.

“They turned around and saw the helicopter on fire,” Enright said. “When they got there, neighbors were doing a heroic job trying to put out the fire and also trying to get the patients away from the burning aircraft. EMS assisted, got two of the patients from the burning aircraft, but at that time the two were deceased.”

Honolulu Police Lt. Wayne Wong said the department received multiple calls about the crashed helicopter at 9:12 a.m.

“It fell directly on the roadway,” Wong said. “It may have clipped some power lines in the area.”

“Oneawa is a very busy street, especially during the morning hours,” Wong added. “People going to work, people going to school. It could have impacted a bigger part of the community. So we’re just fortunate that it (was) … isolated to that one area.”

Stephen P. Lum said he heard an aircraft hovering overhead and then the sound of objects banging against the wall of his home at 535-A Olomana St.

“The items that struck the wall was like a baseball hitting the wall,” he said.

He walked out to his backyard and found pieces of metal strewn on the grass and a dial that resembled a clock from a dashboard. There were also a pair of designer glasses. Across the fence at the adjacent Kailua Racquet Club, he spotted a mirror and a cellphone.

Honolulu Fire Department Capt. Scot Seguirant said firefighters responded to a call at 9:13 a.m. and arrived on the scene at 9:18 a.m. to find neighbors fighting the fire with garden hoses. Firefighters took over, brought it under control by 9:23 a.m. and extinguished it at 9:40 a.m.

The helicopter, whose tail number was N808NV, was operated by Novictor Helicopters, which is run by Nicole Vandelaar, who founded it in 2011. A woman who answered the phone at Novictor on Monday declined to comment, saying, “At this time we cannot release any information.”

Novictor advertises Oahu tours starting at $180 for Pearl Harbor to Diamond Head and going up to $315 for a full island tour, according to its website.

Two FAA inspectors were dispatched to the crash site, Gregor said. The FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board will investigate, with NTSB the lead agency.

State Rep. Cynthia Thielen, who represents the area, said tour helicopters should not have been flying in the neighborhood.

“My heart goes out to the victims of this horrific helicopter crash in Kailua,” she said in a statement. “This happened in our residential area, where the only helicopters flying should be emergency, military and police-related — not tourism-related or commercial helicopters that kill and endanger occupants and people on the ground.”

She called for grounding all tour helicopters “until the authorities have assessed this situation.”

The FAA registry shows that the helicopter that crashed is owned by United Helicopter Leasing LLC, which shares the same Kapalulu Place address as Novictor Helicopters and Novictor Aviation LLC. It was manufactured in 2000.

Novictor was also the operator of a Robinson R44 helicopter that crashed onto the Kaneohe Bay sandbar on Oct. 22. A preliminary report from the NTSB on that crash said the pilot reported losing consciousness and that one of the passengers grabbed the controls to slow its descent.

Megan Lacy, a visitor from Alabama, heard a big crash Monday morning and went to the driveway near the corner of Oneawa and Kalolina streets only to find the front end of her rental car smashed by a helicopter part.

“At first I thought it sounded like a big old car accident,” Lacy said. “I looked left and saw the car like that, and then we see smoke coming up, so we walk over there to see what’s going on. … We found the fuel tank right over there, from the helicopter.”

A piece of debris from the aircraft also struck the car of one motorist driving on Oneawa Street, but she was not hurt, Enright said.

The Kailua Racquet Club was littered with pieces of glass and metal on the courts and grassy areas, according to Bruce Nagel, general manager.

“The debris was considerable,” Nagel said. “It looked like some parts from the helicopter — pieces of aluminum. There was actually a cellphone on the property. There was mostly Plexiglas all around the property.”

“Thankfully it was raining at the time so tennis players were under cover,” he wrote in an email to members, informing them that the club shut down Monday after the crash for the FAA to investigate the debris.

Police advised anyone who finds items that might be debris from the helicopter not to pick them up, but to call 911 so an officer can respond.

The Rev. Ricky Bermudez, a Keolu Hills resident whose family lives in the neighborhood where the chopper went down, said he has been advocating for a no-fly zone around the community. He said he called Novictor several times to complain, but the manager never returned his calls. He described the Robinson R44 as “the cheapest helicopter you can buy.”

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BREAKING NEWS… A helicopter just crashed on Oneawa. Fell right off the sky. I’m told that there are 2 fatalities. More news coming soon

A post shared by My Kailua (@mykailua) on Apr 29, 2019 at 12:24pm PDT